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Prague’s homeless battling COVID-19 find shelter in luxury hotel

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The city’s Centre of Social Services (CSSP) deputy director Ludmila Tomesova said those housed in the hotel were offered three meals a day, full medical attention and television and other amenities while they recovered.

“So the hotel … has guests, even if they are not standard commercial ones, and it is full all the time,” she told Reuters at a four-star Prague hotel in the city centre that has housed about 250 people since November.

The Czech Republic has been among the hardest-hit countries in the world during the recent wave of the pandemic. Deaths from the virus have reached nearly 25 000 in the country of 10.7 million people.

The per-capita infection rate was the third-highest in the world in the past week, according to the Our World in Data website.

Tomesova said Prague, which has about 4 500 homeless people, was trying to help people find shelter and get access to other services once they tested negative and left the hotels.

For some guests, the stay was a rare taste of luxury.

“It’s the first time in my life that I’ve been in a hotel like this,” Josef Jirsa said, as he recovered from a mild case of COVID-19.

 

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