Wearing face masks outdoors will be mandatory in the Czech Republic from Wednesday, October 21. It was announced on Monday, October 20 as the last resort to avoid the looming lockdown since the number of new coronavirus cases still isn’t decreasing. If this doesn’t help contain the spread, lockdown may be introduced within the next few weeks depending on the urgency of the epidemiological situation.
Face Masks Outdoors
From Wednesday, October 21 it will be mandatory to wear a face mask outdoors in places where keeping the distance of at least 2 metres from other people is not possible. While it may seem like wearing face masks is now obligatory everywhere, there are some exceptions to this rule. Wearing face masks won’t be mandatory, for example, within families (that is members of one family) or in sports. They also won’t be required outside the built-up areas. Face masks will be obligatory even when travelling by car unless its passengers are the members of one family.
If the Number Doesn’t Start Decreasing
A few days prior to announcing this new countermeasure, the Minister of Health, Roman Prymula, had said that this would probably be the only countermeasure to be announced this week. He also warned that if not even this helps contain the rapid spread of the coronavirus, lockdown would be introduced.
This, however, will not happen immediately. The Health Minister said that the potential lockdown would be introduced about one or two weeks from now since it takes some time to see if the current countermeasures are working. It should be supposedly discussed already this week – on Thursday or Friday.
The Minister of the Interior, Jan Hamáček, is a bit more specific – he claims that if the Czech Republic sees about 15 000 new coronavirus cases on Friday, the lockdown would be introduced without further delay. He, however, believes that the current measures will have a positive impact on the situation and that this won’t be necessary.
Let us know and get your residence permit as soon as possible to be safe in the future in case the pandemic indeed returns in full force. Having a residence permit is the best way of making sure you’ll be able to return to the Czech Republic even if the borders are closed again.
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Sources of the information: Novinky.cz and zivotvcesku.cz
Source of the image: Unsplash.com
