MUSIC: Czech singer Hana Horka dies after intentionally catching Covid.

Hana Hor­ka, 57, was unvac­ci­nat­ed and had post­ed on social media that she was recov­er­ing after test­ing pos­i­tive, but died two days later.

Her son, Jan Rek, said she got infect­ed on pur­pose when he and his father had the virus, so she could get a recov­ery pass to access cer­tain sites.

The Czech Repub­lic report­ed a record num­ber of cas­es on Wednesday.

Mr Rek and his father, who are both ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, both caught Covid over Christ­mas. But he said his moth­er decid­ed not to stay away from them, pre­fer­ring instead to expose her­self to the virus.

“She should have self-iso­lat­ed for a week because we test­ed pos­i­tive. But she was with us the whole time,” he said.

Proof of vac­ci­na­tion or recent infec­tion with the virus is required in the Czech Repub­lic to enter many social and cul­tur­al venues, includ­ing cin­e­mas, bars and cafes.

WHO warns Covid is not over amid case records in Europe
His moth­er was a mem­ber of one of the old­est Czech folk groups, Aso­nance. She had want­ed to catch Covid so there would be few­er restric­tions on her move­ment, Mr Rek said.

Two days before she died, she wrote on social media that she was recov­er­ing: “Now there will be the­atre, sauna, concert”.

On Sun­day morn­ing, the day she died, Ms Hor­ka said she felt bet­ter and was get­ting dressed to go for a walk. But then her back start­ed hurt­ing, so she went to lie down in her room.

“In about 10 min­utes, it was all over,” her son said. “She died of suffocation.”

Although she has not been vac­ci­nat­ed, Jan Rek point­ed out that her moth­er does not believe some of the more bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about Covid vaccines.

“Her phi­los­o­phy was that she was more okay with the idea of ​​catch­ing Covid than get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed. Not that we would get a microchip or any­thing like that,” he said.

There was no point in try­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter with her as it would get too emo­tion­al, he added. Instead, he hoped that by telling his sto­ry, he could con­vince oth­ers to get vaccinated.

“If you have real-life liv­ing exam­ples, that’s more pow­er­ful than just graphs and num­bers. You can’t real­ly empathize with numbers.”

Jan Rek said his moth­er Aso­nance’s band was “quite a leg­end” in folk and coun­try cir­cles
The num­ber of Covid cas­es in the Czech Repub­lic hit a new dai­ly record on Wednes­day, with 28,469 cas­es report­ed in a pop­u­la­tion of 10.7 mil­lion people.

The gov­ern­ment recent­ly intro­duced new mea­sures to com­bat the rise, includ­ing manda­to­ry test­ing for employ­ees and school­child­ren. The iso­la­tion peri­od for peo­ple who test pos­i­tive but show no symp­toms has been reduced from 14 days to five.

Ear­li­er this month, thou­sands of peo­ple demon­strat­ed in Prague and oth­er cities against the pos­si­ble intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry vac­ci­na­tion for cer­tain sec­tions of soci­ety. The gov­ern­ment is expect­ed to announce its plans soon.

Around 63% of the total pop­u­la­tion of the Czech Repub­lic has been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, com­pared to an aver­age of 69% across the EU.