The Czech Republic hasn’t been spared the vile Coronavirus, with 500 cases confirmed as I write. What’s remarkable is the rate of reaction by the Czech government. As soon as 50 cases were confirmed, prime minister Andrej Babis put the whole country on lock down – no ifs or buts.
All airports were closed and nobody was allowed in or out. The whole population has been told to stay home. In the morning, only the elderly are allowed to go to the shop; no one else is allowed to leave the house until noon. Everyone is expected to wear masks and gloves when outside the home, and people are fined if they fail to follow these rules.
Overnight the main city, Prague, became a ghost town.
My grandparents were kind enough to go out and take pictures for me of the most famous places which would usually be filled with hundreds and thousands of people. (Don’t worry they wore masks and took the pictures while they were in their car.) Places like Charles Bridge and Old Town Square are now completely lifeless. Before the pandemic, you could hardly make it down the street without bumping into someone or stepping on their feet. Now you could do a backflip and nobody would notice – except perhaps the police.
When I saw those pictures I couldn’t believe my eyes. In all of my 21 years I’ve never seen Prague so uninhabited and lonely. The lively and bright city suddenly seemed like a creepy and ghostly town that belongs in a horror movie.
My grandparents agreed: “We have never seen Prague look this lifeless and deserted and we have lived here all our lives.”
Unlike in the UK, the citizens in Prague all wear masks and gloves everywhere they go. They are using their free time to sew masks as it is quite hard to get a hold of new ones (even Czech celebrities like Lucie Bila are making masks), and if they can’t sew masks they come up with new ways to cover their mouths.
