Coronavirus: Reproduction Number R0 is Now Below 1

SA’s Covid-19 reproduction number fell from 1.05 to 0.94, says the Institute of Medical Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic.

Consequently, the PES risk score decreased from 76 to 71 points and moved from the fifth to the fourth level. The paradox is that today the Czech Republic officially moved to the fifth level of the risk system, introducing additional quarantine restrictions.

The R number is a way of rating coronavirus or any disease’s ability to spread. R is the number of people that one infected person will pass on a virus to, on average.

If the number is below one, it means that the epidemic is beginning to decline. However, it is possible to speak of a controlled course of a pandemic only when this indicator is at 0.8 or below.

If the score remains in the fourth level for seven days in a row, the government may consider easing restrictions.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis became the first person in the country to be given a vaccine against the new coronavirus on Sunday.

Babis received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the Central Military Hospital in Prague.

The Czech Republic has ordered 15.9 million vaccines in total, more than half of which will be the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, which should cover nearly 9 million people.