Most of the 396 new coronavirus infections that have been announced by the Polish Health Ministry today have been found in the coalmines of Silesia, where the situation is far worse than in other regions. In the last few days, mining was stopped in 12 mines, due to Covid-19. “Miners have just recently begun to be screened, and many of them turned out to have been infected but asymptomatic and unfortunately capable of transmitting the virus to other people”, Krzysztof Simon, head physician at the Department of infectious diseases of the Regional Medical Centre of Wroclaw, points out. Yesterday, 14^th June, mgr. Wiktor Skworc, archbishop of Katowice (the administrative centre of the Upper Silesia region, where the largest seams of pit coal are located), celebrated Sunday liturgy that he dedicated in particular to the miners and their families. In the sermon, he defined the coronavirus pandemic as “one of the signs of the time” and pointed out that “anyone who has any knowledge of the miners’ working conditions know that they cannot possibly stick to social distancing, but the mines cannot be closed down overnight either”. The prelate called to have a dialogue on the reform of the mining industry, which – to avoid creating social mayhem – “cannot be implemented in a stringent way”.
In Poland, energy is manly made from coal, the combustion of which is held to be one of the main sources of environmental pollution. Since the start of the pandemic, 1,256 people have died from Covid-19 in Poland. Almost 14,500 people have recovered, while 94 thousand people are quarantined.