Czech Republic set for flu epidemic this month

The Czech Republic is likely to be hit by a flu epidemic in the course of January, Novinky.cz reported. Experts say the epidemic could arrive in the middle of the month, the news site said.

Martina Havlíčková, the head of the National Reference Laboratory for Influenza, said the situation was currently calm but that this could change in a short period as children have now returned to schools, where such an epidemic can spread quickly, after the holidays.

Epidemiologist Rastislav Maďar from the medical faculty in Ostrava said it was still not too late to be inoculated against the flu. Last year around 15 percent of the Czech population contracted the illness.