Czech MPs voted on Thursday against the extension of the state of emergency, requested by the minority government of populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis in an attempt to stem an outbreak of Covid-19 infections.
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The vote comes as neighboring Germany has announced the closure of its borders, with a few exceptions, with the Czech Republic and the Austrian region of Tyrol, which record high rates of infection with highly contagious variants of the coronavirus.
Billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis had asked parliament to extend beyond February 14 the state of emergency put in place on September 30, which authorizes the government to deploy the army and firefighters or to keep most of the businesses to fight the pandemic.
But only 48 deputies out of the 106 present voted to extend it.
“We are going to go down in history as a country that demobilized in the middle of a war,”
Interior Minister Jan Hamacek told parliamentarians.
Towards a deterioration of the epidemic situation
Health Minister Jan Blatny, meanwhile, warned that the epidemic situation would deteriorate in less than two weeks and hit hard the country's hospitals, already overloaded.
The Czech Republic, an EU country of 10.7 million people, has recorded some of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the world in recent months.
The country has counted one million confirmed cases and 18,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, while the number of new daily cases recently reached 10,000.
The government decided on Thursday to seal off the three most affected districts in the country, deploying nearly 600 police officers to carry out random checks.
A poll released on Wednesday highlighted widespread skepticism in the country about the pandemic: Less than half of Czechs say they would stay at home if they showed symptoms of Covid-19.
A growing number of people are ignoring government restrictions in the country, with some pubs and restaurants, as well as ski resorts, having for example opened despite the shutdown imposed by the authorities.
