
Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates) called on the Health Ministry on Twitter today to deal with the COVID vaccination of foreigners without health insurance in the Czech Republic.
At present, only people having public health insurance in the Czech Republic can get vaccinated in the country, including foreigners with permanent residence and foreign employees. Their family members and asylum seekers also enjoy an exemption.
Others will have to have commercial health insurance. Hřib argued that if uninsured foreigners, primarily in Prague, were eliminated from the vaccination system, the population protection would not be secured.
Over one million people have received both doses of a Covid vaccine to date, over 3.6 million vaccines have been administered in all.
According to a survey conducted in April by the Center for Public Opinion Research at the Czech Academy of Sciences, 59% of Czechs said they planned to be vaccinated, while 26% of them declared they wouldn’t.
Around 60% of Czechs would prefer the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, while an equal share of respondents would not want to receive the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine.
Meanwhile, a petition has been recently launched calling for foreign residents living in the Czech Republic but insured outside the Czech public health insurance system to be given access to COVID-19 vaccinations.
“They have health insurance, they are legally in the Czech Republic, they are just not insured within the public insurance system. They belong to high-risk groups, yet are denied access to the vaccine. The embassies have not been able to help them, the Health Ministry keeps saying that ‘their registration will be possible in the second phase of the vaccination rollout. That still has not happened. The current system is creating a group of second-class citizens. Let’s fix that!” states the petition.
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