President Miloš Zeman is on a planned visit to the Prague Central Military Hospital (ÚVN). The spokesman for the Castle, Jiří Ovčáček, said. According to Chancellor Vratislav Mynář, the President will undergo a check of the nutrition probe.
He did not specify how long the President would stay in the hospital. According to ÚVN spokeswoman Jitka Zinke, it is a planned short-term hospitalization.
Zeman was in the hospital for 48 days last autumn, and there were doubts about whether he could carry out his duties.
“I can only state that the president’s vacation ends this week, and many activities are already planned for next week—meetings with ambassadors, meetings with the prime minister, and the Earth’s breadwinner,” Ovčáček wrote in a text message.
On October 10 last year, the day after the parliamentary elections, Zeman was transferred to the intensive care clinic of the Institute of Intensive Care Medicine, where he spent 48 days.
According to a report requested and published by Senate President Miloš Vystrčil, doctors considered his long-term prognosis extremely uncertain at the time. They said the President could not perform his duties at the time.
The President has been using a wheelchair for more than a year due to a leg ailment. After his hospitalization last year, doctors inserted a probe into his stomach because of the risk of malnutrition. The chancellor said the earliest the probe could be removed is towards the end of the year.
According to Miroslav Zavoral, his attending physician and director of the Institute of Internal Medicine, after his last blood draw, the President said that of 50 indicators of health, 48 were perfect, and two were poor because of higher blood sugar levels.
At the time of Zeman’s hospitalization last year because of his condition, some senators and deputies began to consider temporarily transferring some of the President’s powers to the speaker of the House and the government, which is allowed under Article 66 of the constitution.
The Castle Office refused to do so, thanks to the improvement in the President’s health. In mid-February, Zeman described the efforts to transfer powers as an attempted coup.
At the end of June, he filed a motion to Justice Minister Petr Blažek (ODS) to investigate possible sabotage. The High State Prosecutor’s Office in Prague said in early July that Zeman’s suspicions were unjustified.