The first coronavirus patient from the Czech Republic was brought to southern Poland on Tuesday, as the country has few places to receive patients in intensive care units.

This was reported by the AR agency.

The 68-year-old woman was transferred to the town of Raciborz in Poland from a clinic in the town of Usti nad Orlici in the Pardubice region.

Foreign Minister Tomasz Petricek said that six more patients from another region are to be transported to Germany.

The Pardubice Region was the first of 14 regions in the country to say last week that intensive care units at its five regional hospitals were overwhelmed with serious COVID-19 patients.

The Pilsen Region in western Bohemia issued a similar statement, while several individual hospitals elsewhere were forced to transfer their patients to clinics across the country.

Health Minister Jan Blatny warned that this week will be the most critical for hospitals in difficulty.

According to his ministry, 8,478 COVID-19 patients required hospitalization on Monday.

Over the past two weeks, the seven-day daily death rate in the Czech Republic has risen from 1.44 per 100,000 on February 22 to 1.88 on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University. This figure is the worst in the world.