Czech Republic’s Covid death toll rockets with so many cases it could achieve herd immunity WITHOUT vaccines

CORONAVIRUS rates in the Czech Republic are so high the country could reach herd immunity WITHOUT a vaccine.

Deaths have sky rocketed as it struggles to contain its latest wave of the virus, with infection rates now the highest in the EU.

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Authorities have begun sending patients abroad for treatment in Poland as hospitals battled to cope with the outbreak.

The number of seriously sick Covid patients reached a new high in the Czech Republic, with 8,618 patients in hospital and 1,853 in intensive care.

The nation of 10.7 million has had more than 1.3 million confirmed cases with 22,280 deaths.

It currently has the highest infection rate in the EU, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

One Czech immunologist has claimed so many people have been infected, perhaps as many as 45%, that the Czech population is on the brink of achieving herd immunity, with barely any help from vaccines.

Health Minister Jan Blatny has predicted that this week will be “the most critical” for the struggling hospitals.

The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths has risen over the past two weeks from 1.44 per 100,000 people on February 22 to 1.88 on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

It comes as the first Czech MP died from the virus yesterday.

Jiri Ventruba, 71, was a renowned paediatric neurosurgeon and had been admitted to hospital with Covid last week, but died on Tuesday.

To cope with the surge in the virus, the Czech Republic is now activating a plan to move dozens of its patients to hospitals in Germany, Poland and Switzerland.

HOSPITALS OVERWHELMED

The first patient was moved from the Czech Republic to southern Poland yesterday, as hospitals became overwhelmed with the pressure of the pandemic.

The 68-year old woman was moved to Raciborz in Poland from a clinic in the town of Usti nad Orlici, in the Pardubice region.

Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek said six other patients from a different region would be taken to Germany.

Pardubice was the first entire region of the country’s 14 to declare last week intensive care units in its five regional hospitals were overwhelmed by seriously sick Covid patients and it could not take any more.

The Plzen region in western Czech Republic followed suit, while a number of individual hospitals in other regions have transferred their patients to clinics across the country.

The government has also ordered medical and high school students as well as medics at outpatient clinics to help out at the struggling hospitals.

They should help reach a goal to add 100 intensive care beds and another 570 oxygen-supported ones, health minister Jan Blatny said.

He is under pressure to certify the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in the absence of approval by the EU's medicines agency but has yet to give the thumbs up, although the president is keen to rollout the jabs.

According to Our World In Data, the Czechs have the second highest number of total Covid deaths per million in the world, after tiny San Marino.

The eye-watering statistics come after the Czech Republic’s coronavirus vaccination drive was thrown into chaos at the end of January when the Health Ministry called for a two-week halt to new vaccinations amid a supply shortage.

The country has now vaccinated less than a million people, compared to the UK’s 24 million.