Tuesday news summary

Respirators to be obligatory from Thursday

The obligation to wear a respirator or other better respiratory protection against coronavirus infection will not be valid in frequented places until midnight from Wednesday to Thursday. The Minister of Health Jan Blatný (for ANO) originally announced on Friday that the obligation would apply from yesterday. Children must wear at least a surgical drape from Thursday. Thus, home-made masks will no longer possible. Among the accepted masks is protection that meets the FFP2, KN95 standards or with a filtration efficiency of at least 95 percent. Two medical face masks are also an option.

People will have to wear them in shops, service establishments, at stops or in public transport, or at airports. They will also be mandatory in medical facilities. They will also have to be worn in cars if members of one household do not ride in them. Children from two to 15 years of age do not have to wear a respirator, because according to Minister Blatný, they are not available for them. However, they cannot continue to use a home-made mask, it must be at least a medical face mask or another with higher protection, such as nano mask.

GPs ready to vaccinate

The Young Practitioners Association, which comprises of about 500 GPs, criticizes the fact that the official distribution of Covid-19 vaccines to GP practices will not begin until March. According to them, vaccines are now unnecessarily left unused in warehouses. Hundreds of general practitioners are willing to distribute the vaccines themselves, said Vojtěch Mucha, the association's vice-president. According to the association, there are now more than 180,000 unused doses in storage, which the GPs say means that up to 15 people die unnecessarily each week when these vaccines are unused.

Covid update

The most patients are in severe condition in hospitals with Covid-19 since the beginning of the epidemic. The Ministry of Health registered 1,329 of them on Monday. More than 6,500 people require hospital care, and their number has been growing in recent days. On Monday, laboratories detected 11,233 new cases of coronavirus, about 2,300 more than a week ago.

Temperatures in the Šumava Mountains have changed by 45 degrees in a week

In Šumava, the weather has warmed by almost 45 degrees Celsius in a week. Last Monday they measured minus 31.4 degrees near Kvilda and yesterday it was 12.9 degrees Celsius at the same place. Temperature records for yesterday were surpassed by two stations in southern Bohemia.