Tag Archives: Czech Republic

Overflowing Czech hospitals seek patient transfers as ‘UK variant’ rages

By Robert Muller

NACHOD, Czech Republic (Reuters) – Jan Mach had coped with his eastern Czech district hospital’s COVID-19 wards filling up – until 22 new arrivals on Monday alone were too much and he had to seek outside help.

On Wednesday, ambulances took 15 patients to hospitals as much as 230 km (140 miles) away, as closer ones were also packed.

“We have been close to our ceiling in the past 14 days, we have touched it several times,” director Mach said, adding the 339-bed hospital had 120 COVID-19 patients. “On Monday alone we took in 22 patients and that was beyond our means.”

Nachod and Trutnov, neighboring districts on the Polish border 150 km east of Prague, are among several regions that have seen incessant spread of the disease, despite a national lockdown.

A new, more infectious variant of the virus first detected in Britain is the likely reason – data from January showed between 45% and 60% of new patients were infected with the UK variant.

On Friday, the region of 550,000 reported just four free beds in COVID-19 wards and eight in high dependency and intensive care units (ICUs) treating coronavirus patients.

“We are taking in patients in a more serious condition and younger patients, I mean born 1970 and later, we had not seen that in the autumn,” Mach said.

Patients who would normally be treated in high-dependency units or ICU have had to be given therapies such as high-flow oxygen on normal wards due to the shortage of beds.

Mach spoke minutes after overseeing another ICU patient being transferred to another hospital. Staff dressed in full-body protective gear pushed the trolley past piles of equipment boxes, one of them with the hand-written label “body bags.”

The Czech Republic has ranked among the European countries worst-hit by the pandemic. Only Portugal has reported more new cases per capita in the past two weeks, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

As of Friday morning, the country of 10.7 million had reported 17,902 COVID-19 related deaths.

Still, the parliament voted on Thursday not to extend a national state of emergency, which will lift some of current lockdown measures including the closure of shops, a loosely policed ban on gatherings and a night-time curfew.

Petr Stepanek, chief surgeon in the resuscitation unit at Nachod hospital, said the situation was “very tense”.

“It is about the ‘British’ variant,” Stepanek said. “If a majority of the population has already had it, thank God. If not, then the situation can become very dramatic.”

(Reporting by Robert Muller; Writing by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Czech field hospital shut due to staff shortages even as pandemic rages

PRAGUE (Reuters) – An unused military field hospital in Prague will be packed up due to staff shortages even as high numbers of COVID-19 patients stretch Czech health-care facilities to the limits, officials said on Friday.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed hospitals in the Czech Republic to the brink of capacity in November and again earlier this month. The central European nation of 10.7 million people is suffering one of the world’s highest infection rates, with more than 16,000 COVID-related deaths recorded.

The army erected the field hospital on the outskirts of the capital Prague in October on the site of an exhibition ground and put the facility on standby, equipped to care for as many as 500 COVID-19 patients.

But because of a death of available staff, “we are unable to roll out the hospital in a way that makes sense,” Deputy Health Minister Vladimir Cerny told a news conference. “If we (do) have staff, it seems to be more purposeful to reinforce standard hospitals than to activate the field hospital.”

There were 5,856 COVID-19 patients in Czech hospitals as of Thursday, including 970 in intensive care – about 20% below peaks in mid-January.

But six of the country’s 14 regions reported zero or single-digit numbers of available intensive care beds. Officials have used ambulances and helicopters to move patients to less crowded hospitals while suspending non-urgent care for weeks.

With around 8,000 new infections reported every day of late, the government fears any new spike in cases from an expected spread of a more infectious British variant of the virus could overload hospital capacity.

Hospitals have also reported declining but still high numbers of infected staff – 4,047 nationwide as of Friday – and have shut down wards and repurposed others specially for COVID patients, running some with the help of soldiers and volunteers.

(Reporting by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Michael Kahn and Mark Heinrich)

Swiss add Paris, Vienna to list of areas for coronavirus quarantine

ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland has added the regions around Paris and Vienna to its list of areas with high COVID-19 infection rates requiring incoming travelers to enter quarantine for 10 days.

The government said it was adopting a regional approach for neighboring countries for the measures which will come into force on Sept. 14. As part of this, it named Ile de France and the Vienna region as areas with a raised risk of infection.

The government also put the Czech Republic and all of Spain on its list of entire countries with a quarantine requirement, which already includes the United States,  India and Brazil.

“It is not a good idea to go to high-risk areas,” Health Minister Alain Berset told a media conference, advising Swiss travelers to steer clear of places on the list.

Switzerland, which has had quarantine restrictions since July 6, said it was responding to a spike in infection numbers in the country.

Switzerland reported 528 new cases of the coronavirus on Friday, the highest daily rise in infections since early April.

As part of its new approach, the government said only regions of neighboring countries where the infection rate is above its limit of 60 cases per 100,000 people will be added to the list, rather then the entire country.

Border regions may be exempted from the list to take into account the close interaction with neighboring regions, it said.

Thousands of workers cross Switzerland’s borders with France, Germany and Italy daily to work in Geneva, Basel and the southern canton of Ticino.

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Michael Shields)

Economic clout makes China tougher challenge for U.S. than Soviet Union was – Pompeo

By Robert Muller

PRAGUE (Reuters) – China’s global economic power makes the communist country in some ways a more difficult foe to counter than the Soviet Union during the Cold War, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on a visit to the Czech Republic on Wednesday.

Pompeo called on countries around Europe to rally against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which he said leverages its economic might to exert its influence around the world.

“What’s happening now isn’t Cold War 2.0,” Pompeo said in a speech to the Czech Senate. “The challenge of resisting the CCP threat is in some ways much more difficult.”

“The CCP is already enmeshed in our economies, in our politics, in our societies in ways the Soviet Union never was.”

The Cold War reference came after China’s ambassador to London last month warned that the United States was picking a fight with Beijing ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

U.S.-China ties have quickly deteriorated this year over a range of issues including Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus; telecoms-equipment maker Huawei; China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea; and the clampdown on Hong Kong.

Pompeo’s visit to the Czech Republic, part of the Soviet bloc until the 1989 democratic Velvet Revolution, marked the first stop on a swing through the region to discuss cyber and energy security.

He used the occasion to swipe at both Russian and Chinese influence and lauded officials in the central European nation of 10.7 million who took on Beijing over the past year.

He cited the Czech Republic’s efforts to set security standards for the development of 5G telecommunications networks after a government watchdog warned about using equipment made by China’s Huawei.

Pompeo and Prime Minister Andrej Babis signed a declaration on 5G security in May, but the country has not made an outright decision to ban Huawei technology. Its President Milos Zeman has been promoting closer ties with China.

Pompeo also acknowledged the chairman of the Czech Senate Milan Vystrcil, who followed through on a plan by his deceased predecessor to visit Taiwan at the end of this month, a trip that has angered China.

Pompeo said some nations in Europe would take longer to wake up to the threats, but there was a positive momentum.

“The tide has turned (in the United States), just as I see it turned here in Europe as well. The West is winning, don’t let anyone tell you about the decline of he West,” he said.

“It will take all of us… here in Prague, in Poland, in Portugal. We have the obligation to speak clearly and plainly to our people, and without fear. We must confront complex questions… and we must do so together,” he said.

(Writing by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Michael Kahn, William Maclean)

Major European nations recognize Guaido as Venezuela president

FILE PHOTO: Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido speaks during a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, January 25, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

By Jose Elas Rodriguez and Sudip Kar-Gupta

MADRID/PARIS (Reuters) – Ten European nations joined the United States in recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president on Monday, heightening a global showdown over Nicolas Maduro’s socialist rule.

France, Spain, Germany, Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands’ coordinated move came after the expiry of an eight-day ultimatum for Maduro to call a new election.

The Venezuelan leader, accused of running the OPEC nation of 30 million people like a dictatorship and wrecking its economy, has defied them and said European rulers are sycophantically following President Donald Trump.

Guaido, who leads the National Assembly, declared himself caretaker leader last month in a move that has divided international powers and brought Venezuelans onto the streets.

Trump immediately recognized him but European Union countries were more hesitant.

Russia and China, which have poured billions of dollars of investment and loans into Venezuela, are supporting Maduro in an extension of their geopolitical tussle with the United States.

“From today, we will spare no effort in helping all Venezuelans achieve freedom, prosperity and harmony,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said, urging fair elections and humanitarian aid.

In response, Maduro accused “cowardly” Spain of taking a “malign” decision. “If one day there is a coup, if one day there is a gringo military intervention, your hands will be stained with blood, Mr. Pedro Sanchez,” he said in a speech.

Maduro, 56, a former union leader, bus driver and foreign minister, replaced former president Hugo Chavez in 2013 after his death from cancer. But he has presided over an economic collapse and exodus of 3 million Venezuelans.

He accuses Washington of waging an “economic war” on Venezuela and harboring coup pretensions aimed at gaining control over its oil. Venezuela’s oil reserves are the largest in the world but production has plunged under Maduro.

“ILLEGITIMATE, KLEPTOCRATIC REGIME”

Critics say incompetent policies and corruption have impoverished the once-wealthy nation while dissent has been brutally crushed.

A draft EU statement said the 28-member bloc would “acknowledge” Guaido as interim president, but formal recognition was a prerogative of individual states.

“The oppression of the illegitimate, kleptocratic Maduro regime must end,” said British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt as he announced London was recognizing Guaido.

Russia accused Europe of meddling.

“Imposing some kind of decisions or trying to legitimize an attempt to usurp power is both direct and indirect interference,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Caracas pays both Russian and Chinese loans with oil.

Maduro won re-election last year, but critics say the vote was a sham. Two opposition rivals with a good chance of winning were barred, while food handouts and other subsidies to hungry Venezuelans were linked with political support.

Italy’s 5-Star Movement, which makes up half of the ruling coalition, dissents from the European stance, saying it would not recognize self-appointed leaders.

But its governing partner, the League, disagrees.

Guaido told Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera that he would do everything possible to secure Italian support.

In addition to European pressure, a bloc of Latin American nations plus Canada were to meet on Monday seeking to maintain pressure on Maduro.

“All these shameless people are clinging to power,” said Luis, a 45-year-old Venezuelan outside the consulate in Madrid. “Let them hold elections so they see they won’t get even 10 percent of the votes.”

Italy’s SkyTG24 channel quoted Maduro as appealing to the Pope to help dialogue ahead of what he hoped would be a “peace conference” led by Mexico and others on Feb. 7. Conscious of the collapse of a past Vatican mediation bid, foes say Maduro uses dialogue to play for time and regroup when on the back foot.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Marine Pennetier in Paris; Guy Faulconbridge and Mike Holden in London; Jose Elias Rodriguez in Madrid; Andrew Osborn and Thomas Balmforth in Moscow; Andrei Khalip in Lisbon; Steve Scherer in Rome; Alissa de Carbonnel and Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Sarah Marsh in Caracas; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Raissa Kasolowsky)