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Although this number may seem frightening to many, it is still only a slight beginning of a situation that is yet to come. Analysts estimate that over the coming months the number of coronavirus patients could increase to an astonishing 1.4 million.
Currently we are all united in faith in one thing – better times. All the more sad is the realization that, unfortunately, we are only at the beginning of a long journey that will certainly not be pleasant for any of us. Fortunately, our state immediately reacted to the developing situation by adopting extraordinarily strict measures, thereby managing to buy itself two months to prepare for a more catastrophic scenario.
The Institute of Health Policy of the Ministry of Health has compiled three theoretical models of the spread of the infection, showing how the situation in the Czech Republic could develop.
If the next three months were to remain under the current measures, the peak of the infection would occur on June 23, when more than half a million inhabitants, i.e. 20 percent of the population, would be infected with the virus. Of those, the estimated number of hospitalizations for coronavirus is nearly 24 thousand people – a similar number should remain for approximately the next ten days, until the beginning of July.
The number of infected and hospitalized could drop only sometime in August, when hospitalization would require “only” just over 11 thousand patients infected with the virus.
Since experts are not sure whether we can adhere to the adopted measures, such as the closure of schools, most shops or the limited state in hospitals and restaurants, for such a long time, they also explained other possible developments.
How to limit leisure activitiesit
In the second model, in which only the measures from last week would remain in force, such as the restriction of leisure activities, the peak of the infection would come at the turn of April and May, but with much more alarming numbers – the coronavirus could have infected up to 25 percent of Slovakia’s inhabitants, which is nearly 1.4 million people, while the number of infected would fall below ten percent only on the 75th day, i.e. May 29.
In the event that Slovakia ignored all measures, the coronavirus would infect almost 2.5 million inhabitants of Slovakia, which represents 45 percent of the population. The peak of the epidemic would thus occur in just a few days at the turn of March and April, when our healthcare system would collapse.
