Prague has a covid problem. Workers that hygienists can’t catch up with
Prague’s chief hygienist Zdeňka Jágrová said today that the problem, which is partly responsible for the worse epidemic in the capital, is the situation. Hygienists are unable to contact them. Talk with them.
They often cannot let them know that someone around them has tested positive and that they should go into quarantine. Therefore, Seznam Zprava asked the head hygienist if this was a group of foreigners and if the influx of foreign students from the Erasmus program, who have overwhelmed Prague in recent weeks, is a covid situation.
At the press conference today, you spoke about the fact that there is a big problem with foreigners in Prague – they are not able to trace. What exactly is the problem?
At the moment, if a positive result is reported to us for foreigners, only the name, surname and telephone number are written there. Simply put, if someone gives the wrong number or doesn’t pick up the phone, there’s nothing we can do about it.
How do you plan to solve this problem?
We cannot apply any strategy. It is essential that we call them to talk to them if they have been vaccinated or not.
The new school year has started, many foreign students have arrived for study stays through the Erasmus program. Do you have data on whether and how it affected the epidemic situation in Prague?
It is still valid that we have a high prevalence of infection in the age group of 20 to 29 years, now it has been surpassed by the group of schoolchildren from 6 years and above, mainly the first and second grade of primary schools. But it was an expected change and we’ll see how it develops.
Foreigners who come to the Czech Republic still fill out an arrival form. Do you have any information from those forms if they are mostly vaccinated or not?
The form is regularly checked at airports, but only randomly at other entrances to the country, because we are in Schengen. But we know that many people get to the Czech Republic without filling out the form.
No, we meant foreign workers who come here repeatedly and have three-month cycles. And these persons are often not a role model for how foreign visitors should behave during a pandemic, so they often do not fill out the arrival forms.
Classmates? Do they fill or not?
So far, I have no information that students do not fill it out.
Foreign workers are often not a model of how foreign visitors should behave in a pandemic, they often do not fill out arrival forms.
You also called for more adherence to the principle of OTN, i.e. when visiting a club or restaurant, to check confirmation of vaccination, a negative test or overcoming an illness. So it’s not currently happening?
How where. It is not required by the operator and the measures are followed, it is required elsewhere and it is not followed there either. We usually go to nightclubs in cooperation with the police, who help us control visitors.
And with regard to the control of compliance with the wearing of masks in public transport, is hygiene also involved?
No, we don’t have the strength for that. We have forty epidemiologists who have been working on covid for more than a year, and we don’t have the space to check the public transport network. However, I know from the crisis team that the city police are doing this because they talked about that meeting and we requested that we continue to monitor it.