News

Hygiene officers in the South Moravian region report a significant increase in chickenpox among young children. According to statistics, the increase is eightfold. In the first five months of this year, doctors registered 5,303 cases of chickenpox compared to the 625 cases registered over the same period last year. According to doctors, 80 percent of children contracted the infection from schoolmates.

EU interior ministers are meeting in Prague to debate the impacts of the war in Ukraine and the related refugee crisis. Representatives of Ukraine and Moldova have also been invited to the talks. Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan said one of the main issues on the table is a centralized registration system for refugees in the EU. He said that in view of the movement of refugees within Schengen it is important for all the relevant data to be in one system. Rakušan said that because the majority of refugees are women and children the security risks are not high. However, he stressed the need to be prepared for potential future risks such as people and weapons smuggling.

Prague has reopened its centre for Ukrainian refugees in Vysočany as of Monday morning, the Czech News Agency reports. The centre was closed in mid-June due to the overburdening of the capital's resources, while the decision to reopen was taken only a couple of weeks later at the end of June. According to Prague mayor Zdeněk Hřib, the decision came from a government directive which he deems ill thought out, as in his opinion the state should first have come up with a system for relocating refugees from the overcrowded capital.

The centre by the Vysočanská metro station will be open from Monday to Thursday between 08:00 and 15:00 and on Fridays from 08:00 to 14:00. As before, it will help refugees with the arrangement of residence permits and health insurance. However, Prague will no longer offer accommodation to refugees, with the exception of temporary tent cities and accommodation provided by the Refugee Facilities Administration.

According to Interior Ministry data, since the beginning of the Russian invasion more than four months ago, about 377,000 Ukrainian refugees have received residence permits, of which 89,000 are in the capital.

The early Baroque fresco in the dining room of the Červená Lhota castle has been restored after centuries of being hidden under layers of paint, Czech Radio reported on Sunday. In the past, the fresco extended over one entire wing of the building and decorated the main social hall, but roughly two-thirds were destroyed during later construction and only a small part in the current dining room survived. Since the fresco was no longer whole, the later owners had it painted over. Restorers have been recovering it from under the layers of paint for the past five years. Now the fresco can once again be admired by visitors.