Czech Parliament Refuses To Extend State Of Emergency

Prague, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Feb, 2021 ) :Czech lawmakers on Thursday voted down a move by the populist minority government to extend a state of emergency aimed at stemming soaring coronavirus infections.

The move came as neighbouring Germany said it would ban travel from Czech border regions as well as Austria's Tyrol over a troubling surge in infections of more contagious coronavirus variants.

Czech billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis told parliament he needed to extend the state of emergency past February 14.

Imposed on September 30, the state of emergency allows the government to deploy the army and firefighters to help fight the virus or to prolong the closure of most shops.

With only 48 of 106 lawmakers present voting in favour, Babis will now have to look for other legal avenues to introduce new measures or to keep existing ones in place.

"We will make history as a country that demobilised in the middle of a war," vice-premier and Interior Minister Jan Hamacek told lawmakers.

Health Minister Jan Blatny warned the epidemic situation would worsen within two weeks as a result and hit the country's overburdened hospitals hard.

An EU member of 10.7 million people, the Czech Republic has registered some of the world's highest coronavirus infection rates on a per capita basis in recent months.

It has seen over a million confirmed cases and almost 18,000 deaths as of Thursday.

Also on Thursday, the government decided to shut off three worst-hit districts, deploying almost 600 police officers to carry out random checks on their borders.

The government has struggled to curb infections as more and more citizens ignore restrictions that have been in place on and off since March 2020.

Defying government-imposed closures, some pubs and restaurants as well as ski resorts have opened up for business.

A poll published on Wednesday showed widespread public scepticism about the pandemic, with fewer than half of Czechs saying they would stay at home if they showed the symptoms of Covid-19.

Some 45 percent said they thought the pandemic was just a "media bubble" and only 18 percent of respondents in the poll commissioned by the World Health Organization and a Czech medical society said the virus posed a high risk.