Coronavirus update, Aug. 25, 2021: Only one in four Czech children aged 12–15 has been vaccinated

About a quarter of children aged from 12 to 15 in the Czech Republic received at least one Covid vaccine dose one week before the beginning of the school year and a further 9 percent of this group had the disease, the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (ÚZIS) said. There are some 456,500 children aged 12 to 15. Of them, 13 percent are fully vaccinated, while 12.5 percent have received the first Covid vaccine dose. Among the 1,485 young people aged 16 to 29 to whom Covid registration opened on June 4, roughly 48 percent received at least one dose and 9 percent had contracted the disease previously. School children who have been fully vaccinated or recovered from Covid won't need to be tested when school starts.

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The epidemic is currently spreading mostly among the 12-to-29 age bracket. This group records from 25 up to 28 new cases per 100,000 population a week. Overall, the incidence rate for the whole country is 12. However, the situation seems to be stable and is far less dramatic than in the spring, ÚZIS head Ladislav Dušek said. Some European states have been experiencing an increase in new Covid cases already, however, mortality and the pressure on hospitals are not growing, Dušek said, adding that he hopes the epidemic will follow this development in the Czech Republic, too. Even though the situation is likely to worsen in September when people return from holidays and education in schools resumes, the development should be less dramatic than last year.

Recurrent Covid infection has grown only mildly in the Czech Republic as 2,089 people have recontracted the disease and had symptoms, which is 60 more compared to the last report published a month ago and the frequency of occurrence is very low, the State Institute of Public Health (SZÚ) wrote. Since the epidemic outbreak in March 2020, the infection has occurred in 1.66 million people. Due to the low numbers of new Covid cases reported in the summer, the number of recurrent infections has also seen little growth. Altogether, repeat infection with symptoms in both cases has been confirmed in 1,268 women and 821 men.

Due to the more contagious Delta variant present in the Czech Republic, public health officials have introduced stricter rules for defining a risk contact, Czech Radio (ČRo) reported. When tracing such cases, they define as risky any contact shorter than 15 minutes and with more than the two-meter distance. The State Institute of Public Health (SZÚ) wrote that the Delta variant has been predominating in the Czech Republic in the past weeks and it seems to be spreading more easily in the air. If the contact with a positive person took place in a closed room, public health officers no longer investigate what the distance was and instead impose a 14-day quarantine that must be ended by a negative PCR test. Mandatory quarantine does not concern the vaccinated.

Plzeň investigators accused a 63-year-old man who filmed a video at the Covid department of the Plzeň University Hospital in mid-March of this year of spreading an alarming message and slander. He live-streamed the footage for over three hours. Among other things, the recording showed the man demanding that doctors give his mother the drug Ivermectin. In the video, he claimed that doctors let Covid patients die because they did not want to give them the drug. Because the incident was committed during the state of emergency, the man faces up to eight years in prison, police spokeswoman Veronika Hokrová said.

There were 250 new Covid cases reported for Tuesday, down from 299 a week earlier. The incidence number of new cases per 100,000 over seven days remained at 12. The reproduction number R dropped slightly to 0.95, and has been under the break-even point of 1.0 for four days in a row. There are 64 people hospitalized with Covid, down from a revised 66 a day earlier, and 11 people are in serious condition, down by one. No deaths were reported for four days in a row. The revised toll for August is 19. For Prague, the incidence number is 28 and the R number is 1.00.