The willingness of Czechs to get vaccinated against Covid-19 is approaching its limits according to latest surveys. The declining interest is also visible in the statistics of the Ministry of Health, which show that injections of first doses have been declining rapidly in recent weeks.

There is even less interest among younger people. Whilst the government is aiming a campaign at them, there are still hundreds of thousands of people unvaccinated among so-called high-risk groups.

According to data from the Ministry of Health, over 64 percent of adults have already received the first dose of vaccination, and another almost 4 percent are waiting for their turn. Beyond the willing and the unwilling, 10 percent remain undecided. The last survey from CVVM comes up with similar numbers. Almost a quarter of the people do not want to be vaccinated, while 7 percent remain hesitant.

Interest in younger age groups has been weaker from the very beginning when registrations were opened for ever-lower age categories. In terms of health impacts there is a problem especially in the group of older people. Although the vaccination rate is relatively high in age groups older than 60, there are still almost half a million unvaccinated.

While in mid-July almost 100,000 people were vaccinated on weekdays, this and last week only around 50,000 were vaccinated per day. In addition, this includes the second dose of vaccination. While in mid-July, paramedics administered over 25,000 first doses a day, this week it has been only close to 10,000, and in the previous week, the first doses did not exceed 20,000.

The decrease also applies to the reported vaccinations in the age groups over 60 years, where healthcare professionals in the last week administered only about 1,000 first doses a day, while in mid-July it was around 3,000.

According to Michal Bartoš, director of the Regional Hygiene Station in Pilsen, the lower vaccination coverage at the border may also be related to the fact that many commuters are living at the border who have been vaccinated in Germany and have not been reflected in Czech vaccinated statistics.

Title image: A person gets a Pfizer vaccine at the National vaccination center in Prague, Czech Republic, Friday, April 9, 2021. On Friday, the center, the biggest in the country, held its final trials before being able to vaccinate up to 10,000 people a day. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)