Josef Středula, the Chairman of the Bohemian-Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions, offered the government to make Monday, November 16th a day off to help improve the epidemiological situation in the country. This will add up to the public holiday on the 17th November, amounting to a total of four days off.
According to Středula, that could make a significant difference in the number of cases.
“We see a great opportunity to get four days of limited social contacts for the price of one day. Ideally, it would also include another day off – Friday, November 13th. For relatively low costs, we can thus significantly improve the situation with the coronavirus in the country,” Středula said, Vinegret.cz reports.
On the 17th November, the country will celebrate the Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day, a national holiday commemorating the 1989 Velvet Revolution as well as previous student uprisings in the country. The holiday falls on Tuesday, thus including Saturday, Sunday and the proposed Monday.
Jan Hamáček, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, agreed to discuss this proposition with the government officials: “This idea seems reasonable to me. This can really help a lot with reducing citizen mobility and speeding up the epidemic’s recession. The opinion of the Ministry of Health will be key here.”
Currently, there are 166,841 active cases of COVID-19 in the Czech Republic. 243,129 have recovered, 4,858 died and 1,206 remain in a serious/critical condition.
