Czech Cabinet Needs Opposition’s Help to Fight Covid-19 Outbreak

(Bloomberg) -- The Czech government appealed to opposition parties to extend a state of emergency so it can tighten a lockdown to include limits on internal travel as the country battles one of Europe’s deadliest coronavirus outbreaks.

Rivals to Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s ruling ANO party are ratcheting up pressure on him before October elections. They’re tapping into voter frustration over his minority administration’s inconsistent response to the virus, demanding they be included in the debate over new measures and given reasons for its push to intensify restrictions that already include a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

“I cannot imagine that there won’t be a state of emergency” Babis, whose ruling coalition lacks a parliamentary majority, said after a late-night cabinet meeting on Thursday. “Measures that we need cannot be carried out without that.”

The government has faced falling popularity in opinion polls and earlier resistance from opposition leaders to its measures to staunch the virus, which is growing at a rate per capita that’s almost 10 times faster than Germany’s.

The Health Ministry reported 14,457 new cases on Friday, an increase of 2,758 from a week earlier. There were 1,120 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people over the two-week period ending Feb. 25, compared with 123 in Germany, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Babis appealed to people to minimize contact for next three weeks, saying new, “really aggressive” variants of Covid-19 are pushing the health-care system to the brink of collapse.

The plans for tightening the lockdown include shutting down schools and most shops that have remained open starting on March 1 and limiting travel between counties in the nation of 10.7 million people. These may be announced as early as Friday.

But the government rebuffed calls from epidemiologists and labor unions to close factories and other industrial facilities where infections are spreading fast in favor of testing workers about once a week.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.