PM: fourth wave of the pandemic will last longer

Poland is experiencing the fourth wave of coronavirus infections. Daily infection records have already exceeded 20,000, while there is less and less space in hospitals across the country.

At a press priefing after a Medical Council meeting, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that "the fourth wave is already here". "Most likely it will have a longer-lasting character, but not as rapid, without such high increase in deaths, that is without the worst tragedy," he added.

"At the Medical Council we have discussed what needs to be done to diminish the scale of this wave. Good news is that in the Podlaskie and Lubelskie voivodeships, where the pandemic has struck the hardest, the R number today is lower than 1. There is hope that, in two weeks or so, this wave will start to diminish also in other voivodeships," the prime minister said.

"It needs to be stressed, however, that the capacity of our health system, our hospitals, has its limits. Unvaccinated people fall ill much worse, and die more often.

Mateusz Morawiecki also said the government was planning to "discuss" with opposition parties a project that would, among other things, allow employers to check whether their employees are vaccinated or not. "We want to discuss whether to project that we have proposed would have a majority to be approved," he explained.

"When we go to a restaurant, we expect the waiters to be healthy. Sanepid (sanitary-epidemiological authority) used to check it before the pandemic. This would be the same thing - there won't be any 'segregation' as some say. A citizen coming to a public office has the right to know they're safe," he added.

Morawiecki also said such regulations would allow employers to delegate some of their employees to work without direct contact with customers, or to work remotely. "So as to go through this fourth wave of coronavirus, and maybe fifth in winter, as smoothly as possible," he added.