Meeting with reporters in the southwestern town of Legnica, Adam Niedzielski said that the number of infections on Tuesday was 85 percent higher than the week before and Wednesday's count was more than 100 percent higher than a week earlier.
Should this trend continue, he warned, ”it will disrupt all our previous forecasts,” with daily cases likely to go well past the predicted 5,000 mark next week.
Such a result would represent “a big, red alert” for the government, Niedzielski said.
He added that the situation was “most critical” in the eastern provinces of Podlaskie and Lubelskie, which between them generated over a third of all coronavirus infections nationwide.
He said health and police checks would be stepped up in these two regions, while officers throughout the country would be monitoring whether people were wearing face masks on public transport.
Niedzielski said that law enforcement officials conducted 2,500 checks on means of transport over the previous 24 hours, admonishing and, when necessary, fining offenders.
From now on, “we agreed with the police that they will be fining people rather than just admonishing them,” he added.
"If these frightening trends in the number of infections continue, then naturally we will have to take drastic steps,” Niedzielski told reporters.
Poland on Wednesday reported 5,559 new coronavirus infections and 75 more deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the country's total number of cases during the pandemic to 2,950,616 and fatalities to 76,254.
As of Wednesday, Poland, a country of around 38 million, had injected over 20 million first doses of COVID-19 vaccines, while more than 19.75 million people had been fully inoculated, officials announced.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, TVP Info