Poland has shut down 12 coal mines after the country’s health minister said most of its coronavirus cases had been identified at these “hotspots.”
The mining region of Silesia has now had more than 10,000 confirmed cases, according to Health Ministry figures compiled by a volunteer data analyst. The total number of cases in Poland is at least 27,668, according to Johns Hopkins University.
At least two coal mines have more than 1,000 confirmed cases, according to figures supplied by coal companies to Polish business daily Gazeta Prawna.
“I want to strongly emphasise: There is no horizontal transmission in Silesia,” Health Minister Lukasz Szumowski told reporters at a news conference on Monday. “The majority of cases are in the hotspot, which is the workplace -- the coal mines.”
“We want to solve this problem once and for all, and enable all these coal mines to return to work in 3 weeks to fulfill their contracts and provide coal,” Deputy Prime Minister Jacek Sasin said.
The government said miners would receive 100% of their pay — unlike many other workers in the country, after businesses had to close from mid-March under lockdown restrictions.
Health Ministry spokesman Wojciech Andrusiewicz was quoted by Polsat News saying that 98% of the cases in Silesia’s coal mines were symptom-free, and the high numbers were the result of a large number of tests being conducted. “No one before us has screened such an amount of symptom-free cases,” the spokesman said, according to Polstat.
Poland has a relatively low number of deaths per million residents, following early implementation of social distancing and lockdown measures, but in the last week of May the national R (reproduction) number, showing the spread of the virus, was 1.25. In the Silesian Voivodeship (province) it was 2.
On May 27, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced an easing of coronavirus-related restrictions. Starting on May 30, Polish people were no longer required to cover their faces in public spaces.
Social distancing guidelines recommending that people maintain a two-meter distance from others are still in place.
However, from June 6 events such as weddings were permitted to have up to 150 participants. Theaters, swimming pools and gyms are now allowed to open at 50% capacity.