State of emergency extended until Christmas

The Chamber of Deputies has once again agreed to extend the state of emergency - but only by 11 days until December 23.

An extension by 11 days was proposed by the Communist Party which usually votes with the government parties. The cabinet originally requested the state of emergency to be extended by 30 days. It will debate a further extension on Thursday.

Most opposition parties do not support prolonging the state of emergency. An expert team of the ODS, KDU-ČSL and TOP 09 parties also prepared their own version of the anti-epidemic PES system with lower levels that would not require the state of emergency to be in place - while the official PES needs it for all of its five degrees.

According to the Minister of Health Jan Blatný (for ANO), the state of emergency will no longer be necessary when there is a maximum of 3,500 new coronavirus cases per week - right now, there is about eight times that.