Coronavirus Update: 16 March 2020

Things are still moving quickly here in the Czech Republic. Friday I posted that restaurants and bars were required to close at 8:00 p.m., but by the time Friday was over, that was tightened to where restaurants and bars had to close altogether except to serve food or coffee to go through windows. Furthermore, all shops other than grocery stores and pharmacies were ordered to close.

As you can see from the photo above, the weather was very nice on the weekend, so after staying in as recommended most of the week, I went out for a walk on both Saturday and Sunday.  I was surprised to see so many people out and about.  While most shops were closed, cafes and restaurants at least had personnel inside with signs posted saying they will serve food and drinks through a window. Some were selling their unprepared food supplies, as the order to close came suddenly and they were fully stocked. I bought some (overpriced) vegetables from an Italian restaurant (some beautiful imported eggplant) just to help them out. But otherwise, because it was warm and sunny, I guess, lots of people were out and about drinking coffee and eating pastries, so in some respects it looked almost like a normal weekend in the neighborhood.

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we do have toilet paper!

I also went to the grocery store, and it was fairly well-stocked except for meet and eggs (they even had plenty of toilet paper, and another grocery store did have meat and eggs). But hand sanitizer is still hard to come by in the larger stores, though I did see one corner shop selling it at a pretty high price.

quarantine in the czech republic

But before it was over, the weekend brought still further restrictions. The Czech government convened a special meeting to consider a full quarantine for the entire country. Late last night, they announced their decision, and a quarantine went into effect at midnight yesterday. So, we are basically in lockdown. The restaurants and bars that were allowed to sell food to go are not even allowed to do that now.

Free movement is restricted except:

• to go to work (for those that can’t work from home),
  
• to go to the doctor or hospital,
• to go to the pharmacy or grocery store, and
• to visit relatives.

That’s it. How exactly this will be enforced I don’t know (how do you show you’re going to work if you work for yourself and don’t have an employer ID, for example? How do you prove you’re going to buy food if you’re just walking down the street on your way to the store? Who will check and enforce this? I don’t’ see police around). In any case, looking from my window, there are noticeably fewer people on the street, but it’s by no means empty.

This quarantine is in effect until March 24th. My hope is that this will severely restrict the spread of the virus and then things can begin to return to normal. Of course, it will take a while – for all countries to return to normal – but perhaps we can start. And hopefully the worst can be avoided.

I have tour clients who are still planning to visit Prague this year. Let’s hope they can! If you’ve got a trip planned or were contemplating one, contact me if you have any questions or concerns, and keep checking this blog for updates.

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