According to Health Minister Vlastimil Válek (TOP 09), the epidemic could peak next week, and there could be up to 80,000 newly confirmed infections per day. He expects that the number of infected children will decrease and that the epidemic will move to the elderly.
By the beginning of the week, he says the number of newly infected will be around 50,000. Then the numbers should fall. He said this could be seen in the development in the capital, where the situation is now at its worst, but the rate of increase in infections is already starting to slow.
“We are stopping the virus from spreading among schoolchildren. In Prague, we are starting to see a slow decline. We are starting to see a much bigger shift to the middle and older population, ” said Válek.
Up to 400,000 seniors in the Czech Republic are not vaccinated against the coronavirus at all. Of those vaccinated, about 100,000 do not have a booster dose.
Válek expects some seniors to be persuaded to vaccinate with the Novavax vaccine, which works on the same principle as most vaccines. Some people reject the existing ones, he says, because it is a relatively new, so-called gene vaccine. It carries information that convinces cells in the body to make a protein specific to the coronavirus. This triggers an immune response, and the body remembers.
Novavax works like a conventional vaccine, carrying a protein already made in the lab that the immune system builds up to react to. This teaches it to defend itself against the coronavirus.