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The head of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics Ladislav Dušek has said he will propose to the Health Ministry that the mayors of municipalities receive data on the number of patients with Covid-19 in their district once a week. Mr. Dušek responded to an appeal from the Union of Towns and Municipalities for regular information on the number of infected on the territory of individual municipalities.

According to the union, mayors lack information on the situation in their municipality at any given time and depend on whatever information they can find in the media or ask to get it from their regional hygiene office.

The army has sent 15 soldiers to help out in the Alzheimer Centre in the Jihlava region, whose employees have been struggling to deal with a local outbreak of Covid-19.

41 of the centre’s 95 clients and seventeen employees tested positive for Covid-19 during a blanket test when the disease was registered. Since then four clients have died and the majority of employees have been quarantined.

The centre’s appeal for volunteers went unheard due to growing fear of infection. The army has won praise from all sides for the manner in which it is helping out in the crisis. Its assistance is also key in the smart quarantine project which serves to trace potentially infected individuals.

People arriving in the Czech Republic from Romania will be required to report to the relevant regional hygiene office and take the Covid-19 test or undergo a 14-day quarantine as of Monday, the Ministry of Health announced on Friday in its regular update of travel health requirements.

Newly, employees from Spain will also be required to provide a negative Covid-19 test. On the contrary, people returning from Tunisia will be exempted from these obligations as of next week.

Employers must require a negative Covid-19 for employees from Bulgaria, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Sweden and as of Monday, also from Romania and Spain. The test must be conducted in the Czech Republic and must not be older than four days.

The number of confirmed Covid-19 positive cases dropped slightly on Thursday to 252, down from 270 and more in the previous days, the Czech Health Ministry reported. The overall number of Covid-19 positive cases has now crossed 16,300. 379 people have died. The growing numbers are due to several local outbreaks of the coronavirus, one of them in the Czech capital. The authorities are monitoring the situation closely and say stricter measures will be introduced if the situation worsens. In Prague face masks are now compulsory in the metro and in pharmacies and medical institutions.