So you’re itching to get to Prague or the rest of the Czech Republic and wonder what the Covid restrictions in the Czech Republic are now, or what are the Covid travel requirements to get entry in the Czech Republic
Easy. There are two good sources for that:
The US Embassy in Prague has a great and frequently updated overview of the entire Covid situation in the Czech Republic and whether foreign travellers (with a special focus on US citizens, obviously) are allowed in the country and on what conditions.
Czech Tourism Board has the official information, although the updates are not as frequent and at times they may lag behind the reality by a week or so. For best results, we would combine these two sources to get the best picture.
Now, the bigger question is… how the hell did we end up here?
The spring
Short story: The Czech Republic did really well in the spring. The government proceeded to impose a very strict lockdown right away, and as we remember it, people were genuinely scared. We were locked in our homes as we looked in horror at the numbers in first Italy and then Spain going up, with corresponding deaths. When we went to pick up Italian food, we asked Italian chefs about their families at home. This felt safe, other countries felt dangerous.
Of course, it should be said that for us, Covid was a disease of skiers coming back from the Italian Alps, meaning usually younger and fitter, which meant that the death toll was fairly low. Also, the Czech Republic has a relatively high number of hospital beds per capita, above the EU average or the US. People here did what everybody else did: we started baking sourdough bread, we cooked, watched The Tiger King on Netflix. We all installed Zoom to check what’s it all about.
Now, not everything was fine on planet Czech Lockdown. The government did not procure face masks in any sufficient numbers, and people began to make their own with their sewing machines at home. The motto was „We will prevail together“, and there really was a sense of a communal effort, even if a big group of people (us included) otherwise genuinely disliked the government and especially the Prime Minister, who, towards the end of the summer, boasted we were „Best in Covid“. That quote did not age well, obviously.
Taste of Prague as a food tour operator was screwed though. Our business relied on the borders and restaurants open, and now they were closed. Travellers were seen as risk-takers at best, and murderers at worst. The food industry was hit substantially, with indoor dining out of the question for most of the spring until the end of May, when things reopened. The government did pay compensations to businesses and individuals (especially single parents whose kids stayed at home), although not as high as people and businesses would have liked. It sucks being as neighbour of the likes of Germany and seeing how efficient the government was there.
But all in all, we did well in the spring. By 1 March and 25 May, when the economy reopened, we had just over 9000 cases, which is a number of new infections we now get daily. We personally didn’t know anyone who got infected.
The summer
The summer was our victory lap. People began to pour back into restaurants and enjoyed daily life. We walked with Zuzi in amazement along the absolutely packed Prague riverside in early June thinking „nobody’s scared of this?“ Nobody was. There was a huge party on Charles Bridge to commemorate „the end of the epidemic“ on June 30: two thousand people sat behind a 1500-foot long table across the bridge to pat themselves on the back. We did it. We beat this thing.
Our business as Taste of Prague actually picked up. We had a few tours for the occasional German tourists, (the US where nearly 90% of our guests before the pandemic were from, was not allowed entry to the EU by that time) and we did quite a few Moravian wine tour weekends for small groups of locals and expats. We travelled, too: went to Tuscany and Slovenia by car (European air travel was still in ruins in the summer) and enjoyed both destinations tourist-free. It felt like tourism in the 1950s: the masses stayed at home, while the dedicated enjoyed the cities to themselves.
But as we were coming back from both vacations, we have begun to realise we were probably the only country to have dropped all precautions altogether: while face masks were mandatory in Italy, Slovenia and all our transit countries (Austria and Germany), the Czechs enjoyed freedoms unparalleled in the rest of the world. We beat this thing, right? So when, in mid-August, the Health Ministry issued an ordinance reinstitution the obligation to wear face masks in public, the Prime Minister himself, who presents himself as a crisis manager and an „I alone can fix it“ guy (ring any bells?), blocked the ordinance. And when the opposition wanted to discuss the rising numbers of infections, the Prime Minister responded that „people did not care about covid. They cared about gardens“. (This was related to a new gardening law he was trying to pass through the Parliament.) We were doomed.
By the end of August, we had 24,642 reported coronavirus cases. We may have heard of one or two people who got infected, but really friends of friends of friends. Nobody in our nearest circle of friends or family got infected.
The fall
Okay, let’s get right to it: by Christmas, we had whooping 664,968 reported coronavirus cases. (The population of the Czech Republic is roughly 10.5 million.) And 40% of all tests taken were positive. Yikes. So what happened? How did a country that was the „best in covid“ become the worst in three months?
Well, we’re no experts, so consider all of this just based on feelings. But we feel it was a combination of things. First, the government. They did downplay the second wave of the epidemic in early fall. Guess what: there were Senate and local government elections in early October. So while the numbers were rising, there was no lockdown until the voting was done, while the government projected the image of winners over covid who successfully protected the nation from a global epidemic. We beat this thing, yeah! Just on the first day of the election, we had almost 3800 reported cases THAT DAY, more than one third of the total for the three months of spring with a lockdown.
While the government seemed to love the epidemic, giving them precious air time to the point where the entire summer felt like a 24-7 press conference. But while the government wanted to show action and decision.making on a daily basis, the super-short news cycle and all the press events created the impression of erratic behaviour, with each decision being immediately amended, changed, fine-tuned, or even called off. People began to be confused and so saturated with all the news that they begun to lose interest. The media chipped in by giving voice to just about anyone who wanted to say anything about the matter without much in the way of fact-checking, which only deepened the confusion… and the frustration. People had no idea what was happening… they only knew they were unhappy about it.
Also, we think people just got tired of the government playing defence the whole time. There seemed to be no plan. In the spring, the lockdown was apparently based on a spreadsheet made by a private banker who sent it to the government, and when the predictions were spot on and showed exponential growth a week or two later, the government decided to institute the lockdown. When the Prime Minister was asked why he did not act in late summer, he mumbled something along the lines that this time, the banker did not send any spreadsheet. Oh my.
And when the elections were done, the government instituted another shutdown of the economy, less strict than in the spring. And that’s roughly when you could start feeling the epidemic getting weaponised for political reasons: the face mask-wearing liberals against the mask-less conservatives. There would be some anti-mask rallies. And people on the internet would start rolling out conspiracy theories and such. Oh well. The government eased the lockdown for two weeks before Christmas (we reported almost 5000 new cases on the first day of easing), and that was the last nail in the coffin. As mentioned, by Christmas we had over 650 thousand cases.
Winter
So we’ve had a shutdown since December 18. Out of the last 100 days, indoor dining was allowed for 15. Today’s (February 3) number of new cases: just over 9000, while the total number of cases just crossed one million. We have vaccinated just over 2.5% of the population, relying entirely on EU vaccine supplies. (In fairness, like most European countries.)
People don’t care anymore. Prague is doing relatively well, with most people working from home. We’re still surprised how many people walk around without a mask (masks are required in all public spaces. We’d say 10-20% of people in Prague don’t have their masks on when they walk around. But we recently took a walk through Kutná Hora, a small Medieval town, and we were practically the only ones with a mask on.
People are tired of it all and have adopted this belief that getting infected is not an „if“ but a „when“. Our numbers have stagnated, and that seems to satisfy most people. People break the rules, and the police doesn’t enforce them. We think everybody waits for the spring to come and the temperatures to go up. The government (we’re on our third Health Minister in less than six months, and he seems to be on his way out, too.) is planning to double down on restrictions in the coming weeks because this seems to lead nowhere. But with enough hospital beds for now, people are okay and don’t mind the numbers.
The Future
So what now?
Vaccinations continue. The temperatures will eventually go up. We think things will be okay here. But it’s been a hell of a year when we’ve learnt a lot about our government and ourselves, too. We have a big election coming up this autumn. Let’s not forget what’s happened here.
And if you’re a foreign visitor itching to visit Prague and see it without people, we’d be happy to have you here… in the spring or summer, when things should be better. Please have a look at the websites mentioned above, or email us if you need more information or an opinion.
Stay well and stay safe, get yourself vaccinated if you can, and hopefully see you soon!