News

Fewer than 22,000 of 2.47 million people in the Czech Republic who received the first of two doses of vaccine against Covid-19 contracted the virus, iRozhlas.cz reported on Saturday, referring to data from the Czech Institute of Health Information and Statistics. What’s more, four-fifths of them caught Covid within three weeks of their first jab, which takes full effect after that period.

The head of the institute, Ladislav Dušek, told the news site that vaccination represented highly effective protection against infection and in particular against severe cases of Covid.

The Tatra T6A5 tram, which has been a common sight on the streets of Prague in recent decades, is taking its last journey on Saturday. The tram was first introduced in 1996 and 150 in total were purchased by the city’s transport authority.

The T6A5 offered relative comfort at the time, with upholstered seats and better ventilation; it did not feature the heated seats of the earlier T3 model.

The European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) has put the Czech Republic on its list of low-risk (green) states, which will facilitate travel to and from EU member states.

The Czech Republic has also moved to ease travel restrictions, adding the United States, Taiwan, Albania, Hong Kong, Lebanon and Northern Macedonia to its list of safe countries for coronavirus infection as of Monday. Other non-EU countries with the same status are Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.

The Foreign Ministry launched a new travel website (dovolena2021.cz) on Thursday listing the conditions for travel to selected holiday destinations.

The heads of care homes and homes for the elderly say they have no way of forcing employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19. The vast majority of clients have undergone inoculation and were given top priority in the vaccination scheme, but in many care homes up to a fifth of employees, mainly younger people, have refused to get vaccinated. In a recent case publicized by the media an employee who refused the vaccine and contracted Covid-19 infected an elderly patient who was vaccinated and who later died of the infection. In some care homes the management says it would welcome compulsory vaccination for people working with at-risk and elderly patients, others fear that such a step would lead to a shortage of employees.