Poland will announce new COVID-19 restrictions for the next two weeks by Thursday at the latest, Morawiecki said, as the country braces for what could be a second Easter spent under a strict lockdown.
Poland will likely report over 29,000 new daily coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the prime minister’s top aide Michal Dworczyk said.
“We are waiting for the final data but all indications are that we will have over 29,000 new infections,” Dworczyk told private television broadcaster Polsat News.
Poland’s highest daily number of new COVID-19 cases to date – 27,875 – was reported in November.
Faced with a fast-growing number of daily cases driven by the highly contagious variant first identified in Britain, Poland announced last week that theatres, shopping malls, hotels and cinemas would close nationwide.
But with the Easter holidays due, usually heralding packed church services and family gatherings in the deeply Catholic country, speculation about tougher measures has grown.
“The health minister and I are in constant contact with our experts from the medical council, we also analyse the environment around us and we will communicate this set of additional restrictions the day after tomorrow at the latest,” Morawiecki told a news conference.
Morawiecki refused to be drawn on what the new restrictions would be. Churches are currently open but with numbers attending limited and only small gatherings of people are allowed.
In total, Poland, a country of 38 million, has reported 2,089,869 cases of the coronavirus and 49,761 deaths.
Main Photo: Polish police patrol on a street after a new lockdown was decreed during the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Warsaw, Poland. EPA-EFE/Piotr Nowak
