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Topics: Coronavirus
Hannah Smith
A Czech singer has died after intentionally catching Covid-19 in order to avoid her country's restrictions for unvaccinated people.
Hana Horka, 57, had reportedly deliberately become infected after her son and his father tested positive for the virus over Christmas in an attempt to gain a 'recovery pass'.
This would allow her to access certain venues that she would otherwise have been barred from as a result of being unvaccinated.
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'She should have isolated for a week because we tested positive. But she was with us the whole time,' her son Jan Rek said.
Rek told the BBC that Horka, who sang in the popular Czech folk band Asonance, had been recovering from the virus but began feeling unwell again after going for a walk, and 'choked to death' after going to lie down in her bedroom.
In the days before her death, Horka had posted on social media to tell her followers that she was feeling better, telling them, 'Now there will be theatre, sauna, a concert,' in reference to places that she would now be allowed to visit under Czech laws that require visitors to public venues to have either been vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19.
Her son claimed that while Horka did not believe some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccine, she believed that it would be better for her to gain natural immunity than to get vaccinated.
'Her philosophy was that she was more OK with the idea of catching Covid than getting vaccinated. Not that we would get microchipped or anything like that,' Rek said, adding that any discussions her family had with her to try and convince her to get vaccinated resulted in emotional arguments.
Horka's death comes as the Czech Republic faces record levels of Covid-19 infections as a result of the Omicron variant, and Rek said he hoped that his mother's tragic story would help convince others to get vaccinated to protect themselves.
'If you have living examples from real life, it's more powerful than just graphs and numbers. You can't really sympathise with numbers,' he said.
According to the EU's vaccine tracker around 63% of the Czech Republic's 10.7 million population has had two dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, a lower proportion than the EU average of 69%.
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