The COVID-19 pandemic in Poland was part of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2. As of 8 June 2025, Poland had a cumulative total of 6,780,272 confirmed cases (17,862 per 100,000 population), and 120,980 deaths (319 per 100,000 population) due to COVID-19.
The first COVID-19 vaccine product was introduced on 23 December 2020. Since then, a total of 58.63 million vaccine doses have been administered, with 60% of the population having received a complete primary series and 34% having received at least one booster dose as of 31 December 2023.
In February and March 2020, health authorities in Poland carried out laboratory testing of suspected cases of infection by SARS-CoV-2, as well as home quarantine and monitoring. On 4 March 2020, the first laboratory-confirmed case in Poland was announced in a man hospitalised in Zielona Góra. On 10 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the local transmission phase of SARS-CoV-2 in Poland. On 12 March 2020, the first death from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Poland was that of a 57-year-old woman.
Polish authorities opted into the European Union's tender procedure for purchasing COVID-19 pandemic-related medical equipment on 17 March 2020.
On 10–12 March 2020 lockdown-type control measures were implemented, closing school and university classes, offices, and cancelling mass events, and were strengthened on 25 March, limiting non-family gatherings to two people and religious gatherings to six and forbidding non-essential travel. On 20 March 2020, the Ministry of Health officially declared an epidemic and on the same day tried to prevent medical personnel from commenting on the pandemic. The Polish Ombudsman Adam Bodnar defended medical personnel's right to speak publicly about the epidemic on constitutional grounds of freedom of speech and the right of the public to information. Doctors opposed the self-censorship orders.
Lockdown restrictions were tightened on 31 March 2020 by a government regulation, requiring individuals walking in streets to be separated by two metres, closing parks, boulevards, beaches, hairdressers and beauty salons, and forbidding unaccompanied minors from leaving their homes. Restrictions were relaxed starting 20 April, allowing religious gatherings and funerals to be held for up to a maximum of 50 people. Starting on 1 April 2020, fatalities which were clinically or epidemiologically diagnosed as COVID-19 (U07.2) were also considered as COVID-19 deaths by NIPH–NIH.
Timeline
Monitoring, February 2020
During January 2020, Warsaw Chopin Airport carried out special screening measures for passengers arriving from China.
In February and March 2020, health authorities in Poland carried out laboratory testing of suspected cases of infection by SARS-CoV-2, as well as home quarantine and monitoring.
In February 2020, four-member teams at the National Institute of Public Health – National Institute of Hygiene (NIPH–NIH) together with the Berlin hospital Charité carried out 307 genetic tests of samples from suspected SARS-CoV-2 carriers. NIPH–NIH carried out the tests in its Warsaw laboratory and in the Wojewódzki Szpital Zakaźny in Warsaw. Diagnostic laboratories in eight other towns were being prepared to make similar analyses. The Ministry of Health refused to state how many test kits were available in Polish laboratories.
On 19 February 2020, twelve people remained hospitalised "in connection with the coronavirus", 13 were under home quarantine and 1,000 were being monitored by health services. On 27 February 47 people remained hospitalised with suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection, 55 were under home quarantine and 1,570 were being monitored by health services. Polish Minister of Health Łukasz Szumowski stated on 27 February that he expected laboratory-confirmed positive SARS-CoV-2 cases in the following days.
March 2020
New law: "specustawa", March 1, 2020
On 1 and 2 March 2020 new law (nicknamed Polish: specustawa, lit. special law) to manage a possible epidemic of COVID-19 or other infectious diseases in Poland via administrative, budgetary and epidemiological measures passed through a first reading by a parliamentary committee and through second and third readings by the Polish lower house of parliament, the Sejm, with 400 votes out of 418 in favour in the third reading. Konfederacja was the only parliamentary club which voted against the measure. Philosopher and law professor Jerzy Zajadło praised the discussion of the bill in the Sejm, in that the Speaker allowed members of parliament to discuss the bill under the principles of deliberative democracy, which he judged rare for the parliament dominated by PiS. Zajadło criticised the bill as establishing vague powers with little chance of checks and balances, which he saw as being in the spirit of the approach of the political party in power; he saw the bill as establishing a permanent state of emergency for COVID-19 and all other contagious diseases; he criticised the wide array of changes implied in the law as having consequences difficult to predict; and he judged the law to be unnecessary given that laws covering the situation already existed. Ewa Łętowska, a former judge in the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, also criticised the law as effectively creating a new, 180-day long state of emergency, in addition to the state of emergency rules defined in the Polish Constitution for a maximum of 90 days. She interpreted the law as giving the authorities arbitrary power without control by administrative courts.
First cases
On 3 March 2020 a total of 559 SARS-CoV-2 tests had been run for people in Poland suspected of SARS-CoV-2 infection, all with negative results, while the numbers of people home quarantined and monitored increased and the number of hospitalised, suspected cases dropped.
On 4 March 2020 the Minister of Health claimed that nine laboratories were carrying out SARS-CoV-2 testing (NIPH–NIH and Voivodeship Infectious Disease Hospital in Warsaw, and laboratories in Olsztyn, Wrocław, Poznań, Katowice, Rzeszów, Gdańsk and Kielce), while OKO.press claimed that only four laboratories were carrying out the testing. The Minister claimed that "sanitary–epidemiological stations" in Lublin, Łódź and Poznań would start SARS-CoV-2 tests the following day. On 6 March, the Minister stated that 13 laboratories were running SARS-CoV-2 tests.
The first lab-confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 in Poland was announced on 4 March 2020, out of 584 tests in total. The patient, a 66-year-old man, returned from a visit to Westphalia in Germany by bus to Świecko and from there by private car to Cybinka. He telephoned a general practitioner. He was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Zielona Góra, where he arrived around midday 2 March. On the evening of 2 March, a sample from the patient was sent for analysis to Warsaw. The result was known to be positive during the night of 3 to 4 March, and announced by the Minister of Health at 8:00 local time on 4 March. OKO.press criticised the delay of 44 hours from the patient's arrival at the hospital to the announcement of the positive test result as excessive. Close contacts of the patient were home quarantined. The Minister of Health requested the media to respect the patient's privacy.
On 6 March 2020 Polish Minister of Health Łukasz Szumowski announced the confirmation of four new cases: one hospitalised in Ostróda, linked to "patient zero" from Cybinka (the two had travelled in the same bus); two patients in Szczecin who had returned by car from Italy; and one patient in Wrocław who had returned from the United Kingdom (UK). On 7 March, another SARS-CoV-2 case, of another person who had travelled in the bus together with "patient-zero", was announced by the Minister of Health as lab-confirmed.
On 8 March 2020 the Ministry of Health reported two new cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. One person was hospitalised in Warsaw and another in Racibórz (Silesian Voivodeship). Both were in good condition. In the evening, the Ministry confirmed another three positive test results, increasing the daily case count to five new cases. The patients were hospitalised in Warsaw, Wrocław and Racibórz: one elderly person, one middle-aged and one young. The elderly person (hospitalised in Wrocław) was in serious condition.
On 9 March 2020 Polish Minister of Health Łukasz Szumowski announced the confirmation of five new cases. Three cases were confirmed in Racibórz, one in Kraków, one in Wrocław and one in Poznań, bringing the total number of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases in Poland to 17.
Local transmission, 10 – 27 March 2020
On 10 March 2020, the mode of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Poland was officially declared by the World Health Organization as having shifted from imported cases only to local transmission. and the same day, Armed Forces General Commander gen. Jarosław Mika was diagnosed and the eighteenth confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection was announced in the Masovian Voivodeship. The two SARS-CoV-2 patients earlier announced in Warsaw were both seriously ill with COVID-19.
On 16 March 2020, the number of confirmed cases increased to 177 and the death toll to 4. One of those infected was Minister of the Environment Michał Woś.
On 17 March 2020, "patient zero", at Zielona Góra hospital, tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 for the second time, and was considered to have recovered.
On 20 March 2020, the Ministry of Health officially declared an epidemic.
As of 29 March 2020, there were 269,307 people under quarantine for suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection and 42,783 SARS-CoV-2 tests had been made since the beginning of testing.
Nursing home and hospital clusters, March 2020
On 17 March 2020 a doctor at a hospital in Grójec, "Z.", had a dry cough and fever and had a sample taken for SARS-CoV-2 testing. While several members of staff did not want to work with him, the head of their group disagreed but decided after a long debate to isolate Z. The hospital continued to function for the rest of the day without disinfection of the places where Z. had been present. On 18 March, Z. was confirmed to be SARS-CoV-2 positive, and the hospital took samples from close contacts of Z. from the previous five days. Some of the nurses were ordered back to work at the hospital while waiting for their test results. As of 24 March 11 of the 59 patients of the hospital and seven medical personnel were found to be SARS-CoV-2 positive. Onet.pl and Gazeta Wyborcza described the situation as contagion caused by carelessness. One of the Grójec hospital personnel also worked at a Niedabyl nursing home. On 28 March 2020, 52 of the 66 residents and eight employees were found to be SARS-CoV-2 positive.
On 1 April 2020, 38 hospitals and hospital sections around Poland, including twelve in the Masovian Voivodeship that includes the Polish capital of Warsaw, were temporarily closed due to the risk of SARS-CoV-2 contamination from a confirmed or likely SARS-CoV-2 infected patient.
Second wave, October 2020
On 5 October 2020, Przemysław Czarnek tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
On 14 October Sebastian Kaleta tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
On 24 October, it was announced that Polish president Andrzej Duda had tested positive for COVID-19 after attending an event in Tallinn where he met Bulgarian president Rumen Radev who had gone into self-isolation after the event.
On 2 December 2020, Poland reached 1 million cases.
Epidemic controls
Lockdown type measures
On 10–12 March 2020 lockdown-type control measures were implemented, closing schools and university classes, offices, and cancelling mass events, defined as those allowing 1000 or more participants in the case of stadiums or other events outside of buildings, and those allowing 500 or more participants in the case of events in buildings. on 12 March 2020, cultural institutions, such as philharmonic orchestras, operas, theatres, museums, and cinemas, had their activities suspended. and all schools in Poland were closed with a reopening initially scheduled for 25 March 2020. The closure was extended to 10 April, with schools being required to carry out online classes with their students. As of 20 March 2020, the dates of final exams for eighth (final) year of primary school and matura, the exam during the final year of secondary school (liceum or technikum), remained unchanged. Universities cancelled classes for the same period, while typically keeping research and administrative staff at work and allowing exceptions for research purposes.
On 20 March 2020, the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki declared an official epidemic in Poland.
On 24 March 2020, Poland's government announced further restrictions on people leaving their homes and on public gatherings. The new limits constrained gatherings by default to a maximum of two people (with an exception for families); an exception for religious gatherings, such as mass in the Catholic Church, funerals and marriages in which five participants and the person conducting the ceremony were allowed to gather; and an exception for workplaces. Non-essential travel was prohibited, with the exception of travelling to work or home, SARS-CoV-2 control related activities, or "necessary everyday activities". Everyday activities qualifying as "necessary" included shopping, buying medicines, visiting doctors, walking dogs, jogging, cycling and walking, provided that no more than two people participate and contact with others was avoided. The restrictions were initially defined for the period from 25 March to 11 April inclusive.
As of 12 March 2020, the National Bank of Poland, to which commercial banks in Poland send their bank notes to, carried out a two-week quarantine procedure and heating at 150 °C (302 °F) for all bank notes, prior to returning the notes for circulation.