On Wednesday, more vaccination centers for vaccination against covid-19 will open, where people can come without an appointment. They will be in the Karolina shopping center in Ostrava and Olympia in Brno. The Ostrava University Hospital and the St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno will be in charge of their operations. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) said this today when taking over the additional vaccines from the Hungarian government.
People in Brno will choose two vaccines, one from Pfizer/BioNTech and one from Johnson & Johnson. “We will be open every day, including weekends. So far, the set time is from 10:00 to 20:00. Depending on the interest, we will adjust it,” Dana Lipovská, a spokeswoman for St Anne’s Hospital, revealed.
The vaccination center in Ostrava will be open every day from 08:00 to 19:00, Health Minister Adam Vojtěch (ANO) tweeted. Health workers there will vaccinate with a single-dose Janssen vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. Both centers will have a daily capacity of 800 people, according to the minister.
On Monday, the first two vaccination centers for people without registration opened in a shopping center in Prague’s Chodov district and at the central railway station. People are very interested in getting vaccinated at these places, with queues of up to 150 meters forming on days and waiting times exceeding two hours. Hundreds of doses are administered there every day, Vojtěch said, and on Thursday, 445 people were vaccinated at the railway station and almost 900 at the Chodov station. Babiš said the vaccination centres are working well. A third one will start operating on Monday at the shopping centre in Smichov. The Plzeň Region will also allow vaccinations without registration and the Zlín Region is also considering it.
Babiš also said today that health insurers have already sent letters urging people who have not yet been vaccinated to get vaccinated. There may be people who can not get vaccinated for health reasons, he admitted.
The health ministry now has the task of saying what will happen to people who have had covid-19 and have antibodies. A clinical group at the ministry should also recommend whether a third dose of the vaccine will be needed and, if necessary, to which groups of the population. Babiš said there is talk that people who have had transplants or are chronically ill could receive a third dose.