Final Word from Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Czechs still don't realize how close they are to the "nervous lockdown" we wrote about on July 16. Since then, the two-week moving value of covid-19 infections has jumped by 60%, from 1,429 to 2,280. That's 21.3 infections per 100,000 inhabitants over a two-week period, which is comfortably above the "general warning parameter" of 16 per 100,000 spoken of by Health Min. Adam Vojtěch. Crossing the very threshold the CR was imposing with such vigor on other countries (Serbia, Montenegro) is a landmark event, but few Czechs have noticed so far. This can't be said of Estonia and Latvia. They removed the CR from their lists of "safe" countries, because the two-week cumulative number of cases exceeded 16 per 100,000. By Estonia's calculation, the CR was at 17.7 per 100,000 as of July 24. Every EU country has its own rules so far, but this could change at any time. If members decided to adopt the same 16 per 100,000 recommendation that the EU Commission proposed in late-June for dealing with non-EU countries, Czech vacationers might suddenly be all packed up with no place to go in Europe this summer or fall. [ Czech Republic European Union on the verge European Union ]