Unofficial Translation
Press Conference on current epidemiological situation 9/2/2021
Minister of Health Krajci
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. From 8 February the Covid Automat system applies at the territory of SR. Based on this system, the Government approved a resolution last week, according to which I should inform you every Tuesday about the current epidemiological situation. Following on such information, Slovakia will be governed by the rules according to Covid Automat, following on the results announced on Tuesday, from next week Monday.
Let me first provide an overview of the situation by the comparison with our neighboring countries. This graph shows the curves of these countries based on PCR testing. The situation is the most serious in Czech Republic, followed by Slovakia. The situation in Poland, Austria and Hungary is stabilized, the numbers are pretty low, and these countries are already starting to relax measures. As we see both in Slovakia and Czech Republic, the curves seem to be rounding again and showing that there might be another increasing trend, which is of course not good news.
This is the same data but expressed in numbers. We see a slight increase in numbers in Slovakia from 476 to 496 this week. The numbers have also increased in Czech Republic and in Hungary.
We are also keeping look at the mobility levels, which can demonstrate how people are respecting the rules in Slovakia. The mobility trend in walking in increasing, which can be also explained by the fact that people have to go get tested more often. When it comes to public transportation and other mobility, the trend is only slightly increased.
The current situation is being expressed in the regular weekly numbers. A 14-day incidence is already slightly increasing, from 473 to 498 for PCR tests and the same trend can be observed for antigen tests. When it comes to numbers of hospitalizations, there we have seen a decrease during last week, when the number decreased to approximately 3500, however, unfortunately in last two days the numbers increased again. In the end, compared to the numbers from last week, there is a slight decrease – from 3743 to 3652. There is unfortunately an increasing trend when it comes to patients requiring the artificial lung ventilation. A 7-day average, which is also one of the parameters observed for the Covid Automat national criteria, has also increased – from 4901 to 5252. We are testing more and more every week, the current 7-day daily average is currently 240221 – this number includes both PCR and antigen tests. The positivity rate of tests is no longer decreasing, it has rather stabilized – it is 20% for PCR tests and 1% for antigen tests. When it comes to number of deaths, there the situation is not improving unfortunately – still around 100 patients die daily because of Covid-19. The vaccination is going well – we already have 226916 people vaccinated as for yesterday evening, and today, an additional approximately 10000 people are expected to have been vaccinated.
Finally, the reproductive number is currently somewhere slightly above the number 1, which is not good, and the similar development is also expected to continue next week, given schools have been opened.
This is the graph of the development of the number of new cases. We could say that the situation regarding the PCR tests is more or less stabilized, and when it comes to antigen tests we see slight increase. A 7 day average, as I already said increased slightly to level 5252 PCR and antigen tests together.
The development of the number and positivity of tests – the positivity of PCR tests seen a slight fall in mid-January, now it has returned to the level of approximately 20%. When it comes to antigen tests, there the positivity is of around 1%.
Situation in hospitals – this graph shows a lot. You can see the numbers of emergency services travelling to patients with diagnose of Covid-19. Unfortunately, the trend, from 12 January until now, 8 February, shows permanent increased. In the last week we had 2452 such travels of emergency services to patients.
These are the emergency services travels according to individual regions. The worsening of situation can be seen in Kosice region, Bratislava region and unfortunately also in Trencin, Presov and Zilina regions. We still can see divide between southern and norther Slovakia, where northern Slovakia is doing better currently.
When it comes to the bed occupancy. We currently have 3426 patients hospitalized with the confirmed Covid-19 diagnose and the reprofiled bed are used at 67.8%. Currently we have around 800 patients at artificial lung ventilation – this number includes both the patients with Covid-19 diagnose and also other patients who need this ventilation out of other reasons related to different diagnoses. The capacity is currently 70 ventilators prepared for patients with Covid-19 and another reprofiling of another 150 ventilators is only possible if the patients of white and red departments would be mixed (red departments being those dedicated to Covid-19 patients). This is a very serious situation. Although we have around 1000 bed with ventilation available in Slovakia, we cannot use all of them in a way that they would be perfectly divided into white and red departments.
When it comes to the medical personnel that is in quarantine because of being positive or suspected of disease Covid-19, we see a positive trend. These numbers are gradually decreased, currently it is 1757 in work incapability. This is of course thanks to vaccination.
More than 35000, mostly from this first line, are already vaccinated and of course many of them already overcome the disease too.
This is graph of Covid deaths. There are currently 6618 registered deaths, out of which 5382 are confirmed by the office to supervise medical care as directly caused by Covid-19.
Slovakia is currently 3rd fastest vaccinating country in the EU. Of course, the numbers of vaccinated people at the territory of individual countries is determined by the deliveries of vaccines. We currently have 226916 doses of vaccine applied, out of which 35016 people were already given the second dose of vaccine. The highest share of vaccinated people is in Bratislava region, where it is more than 6%, followed by Kosice region with 4.65% and Zilina region with 4.26%.
From 18 January we launched the vaccination of people in social service facilities, from 20 January the vaccination of people over 85, from 27 January the vaccination of people over 75 and from 13 February we are launching the vaccination of teachers and critical infrastructure.
Ministry of Education will hand over the list 40000 teachers in kindergartens and first level of primary schools, and also teachers who will in presence teach students of last year of secondary schools. We will preferentially vaccinate these teachers, as they will ensure the teaching in presence form in those districts where it is allowed. The vaccination will take place at the level of regional cities, we will assign 12 vaccination centers for these purposes. The vaccination will take place on Saturdays and Sundays, we will already start on this weekend.
The perspective is, if the AstraZeneca vaccine comes in amounts as expected, that from 1 March the big vaccination centers with this vaccine will be launched.
The new decree of the vaccination order will be probably published tomorrow or the day after.
The scheme of prioritized groups of persons will look as following. The first three phases are not being changed, these are of course already ongoing. However, due to current situation, we have put the teachers ensuring the learning in presence form in the fourth phase. As I said this should be around 40000 people based on lists from Ministry of Education. Also, in three hospitals – the Hospital of St. Michal in Bratislava, Hospital of St. Michal in Kosice and Hospital in Ruzomberok – we will also vaccinate the critical infrastructure, according to lists handed over by the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior will collect these lists from other Ministries according to their prioritization, and these people from critical infrastructure will be vaccinated according to the capacities of these three hospitals. In the following phase,
there will be people with serious diseases, regardless of age, and people caring for the seriously disabled persons. This phase will be followed by vaccination of people with mild diagnoses, and then people over 65 with Pfizer or Moderna vaccines only, followed by people over 55, also only with these vaccines, and then people over 45 and the last group of people over 18. The AstraZeneca vaccine will not be used for people over 55.
When it comes to the measures valid from next Monday, the criteria for change of color for our country have not been met. We have not managed to decreased the number of hospitalizations, new cases, not the reproductive number. Given these criteria, Slovakia is in black phase.
This is how the division of Slovakia looks like when applying the regional criteria. Unfortunately, the situation has worsened compared to last week, majority of districts is in dark red color.
We have already 15 districts in black color, 51 in dark red and 13 in red color. We no longer have any district in light red/pink color. The situation in Veľky Krtíš worsened so much that it is now in dark red color.
What this mean for the individual districts is the following. Apart from the national measures, the special rules apply for schools and kindergartens. These are to be closed in the black districts, in dark red districts they are opened or closed based on recommendation of regional health office, municipalities and directors of schools, and they are opened in red and light red districts. The validity of test in employment is 7 days in black and dark red districts, 14 days in red and 21 in light red/pink districts, which we do not have anymore. The test is to be required in those red districts only from 15 February. The toughened rules for districts whose situation has worsened apply already from Monday next week.
When it comes to travelling to nature in other districts, the resolution is quite clear about this – such travelling to or from the black district is not possible. Visiting nature within this district is of course possible, even without test. However, people from this black district cannot travel to nature in another district, neither can people from other districts travel to this black district to visit the nature, even with a test. In dark red, red, and pink districts, travelling between districts for visiting the nature with test not older than 7 days is possible. Visiting nature within one´s district is possible without test too.
I will now ask the Chief Hygienist to comment a little bit on the extended quarantine due to the more aggressive variant of the virus.
Chief Hygienist Mikas
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as was already announced last week, the pandemic commission recommended return of pupils to schools which means heightened risk for the spread of virus. That is why we have decided to balance this threat and make some conditions stricter, such as quarantine measures.
We have prolonged the quarantine to 14 days. When it comes to persons returning from abroad, they go into domestic quarantine and get tested on earliest 8th day, instead of previously written 5th day. If such test is negative, the isolation is terminated. Of course, several exceptions apply to this rule, as specified in the respective decree. When it comes to close contacts, we also toughened the criteria – the testing is possible only on 8th day as well and regardless of the result of test, the isolation continues for the length of 14 days. In case of people with symptoms, these go for the earliest PCR test or antigen test, and their quarantine ends based on the evaluation of their attending doctor. When it comes to asymptomatic positive cases, their quarantine ends on 14th day as well. The testing in all of these mentioned cases is free of charge.
Thank you.
Questions:
Q: Can you confirm whether the South African variant is already present in Slovakia?
MK: So far, I cannot confirm it, I discussed the possibility of the presence of this variant with several colleagues, but I hope it will not be confirmed. At this point I do not have exact information, so I cannot communicate any conclusions yet.
Q: Are you not considering toughening the border measures?
MK: According to current rules, people coming to Slovakia need to register through ekarantena and go to quarantine and wait for test on 8th day. We think that 8 days is long enough period for any virus to develop and be identified by test.
Q: But people can also come with 72 old test instead of quarantine.
MK: Yes of course. I would like to open this question of border regime at the government again this week. We should think how to ensure the detection of the virus of those who come to our territory. It is unpopular and logistically very difficult measure, nobody is eager to take stricter border regime or any state quarantine, but currently I think it is important to address this topic.
Q: What is the current prevalence of the British variant? Have you made any additional research of the new samples?
CH: We announced the most recent data on Friday, coming from a representative research across whole Slovakia, when all positive samples from Wednesday were re-tested with the test for identification of the presence of new variant of the virus B117. We found the high prevalence of 74% of this variant in Slovakia. We agreed with colleagues that we will repeat this research next week on Wednesday again to see the dynamic of the presence of this virus.
We are curious if this percentage will increase, stay same or decrease. So next week we will do similar research.
Q: What are the current number of vaccines in Slovakia and how many should come this month?
MK: We have around 250000 doses from company Pfizer, 210000 doses from company AstraZeneca and some dozes thousands of vaccines, here I am not sure about exact number, from Moderna confirmed for delivery for this month, some of which already came.
Q: Could you explain why people who tested negative after 8 days of quarantine need to complete their 14-day quarantine when they were in contact with positive person. What is the meaning of registering for testing then?
CH: The test result is still an important information for this person, for his/her attending doctor and for the people in his/her surrounding. Such person could have met with other persons meanwhile, which should also get registered for testing. Sometimes the health condition can unexpectedly worsen after several days too, so we see a meaning in this procedure.
Q: In the decrees there are no exceptions for people already vaccinated with second dose.
Why is this so?
CH: At this point there is still an ongoing discussion at the expert level. The vaccine producers state different effectivity of the vaccines, and there is still a certain percentage of people that do not develop the immunity towards the disease. There is an assumption, however, then in future we will provide for exceptions for vaccinated people. We are discussing this at the Council of Experts, so far it is not there before we are still waiting for definite conclusions from international medical organizations.
Q: Are you considering providing the tests for use at home?
MK: Currently in the European Union there is no test registered for self-use. We are doing everything possible to ensure such option as well, we are thinking of such option, but we need to proceed according to law. We know that in Austria the government also recommends the use of such self-use tests. We managed to purchase more than 8 million antigen tests with the Material Reserves of Slovakia and we are trying to procure more, but I was told by the
Chairman of Material Reserves that such nose 2 cm tests were not available. Meanwhile some other companies have come to the European market which offer such tests, so we expanded the specification for public procurement to include more producers of such nose tests.
Q: Will Slovakia approve the Russian vaccine even before the European Medical Agency does?
MK: Slovakia is looking for all available possibilities to ensure as many vaccines for inhabitants of Slovakia as soon as possible. We are currently in very serious situation and we need to vaccine as soon as possible.
Q: Will teachers above 55 receive different vaccine than AstraZeneca?
MK: Yes, they will be vaccinated by Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
Q: Will other employees of schools be vaccinated or only teachers?
MK: So far only teachers, in the amount of 40000. The Ministry of Education has received task to prepare the lists of the teachers that meet the conditions – teaching in presence form.
Q: Will new mobile testing places be added according to the current call of the Ministry?
MK: Given our employees are also still not yet vaccinated, we faced several problems these days with the infection of our almost whole legal department that is in quarantine. Therefore we needed to assign other employees to assessing the contracts with the providers who applied for opening the testing places. All contracts that met the conditions were already signed and will be published. There are also some contracts with problems left – there the applicants will have to fill in some documents and then the contracts will be finished during this week.
Q: What number of MOMs (mobile testing places) are we talking about?
MK: It should be at least 500 new MOMs.
Q: Some municipalities would want to ensure mass vaccination for their citizens. Will you support such initiatives or will the vaccination only be possible according to vaccination plan of the Ministry of Health?
MK: I announced already that if the deliveries from AstraZeneca allow, from 1 March we would want to establish mass vaccination places at the level of regional cities, which would be able to vaccinate thousands of people per day. We will of course cooperate with municipalities, the logistics are prepared. But it will all depend on the deliveries of the vaccines.
Q: If some region open schools this week because it could and this week it is already black, does it mean it should close the schools from Monday?
MK: Yes, exactly.
Q: When do you expect next phase of vaccination to take place?
MK: I suppose it could be from 1 March. When it comes to AstraZeneca vaccines, the already established vaccination centers will not vaccinate with this vaccine, it will be so far used only
for teachers. The next phase is expected to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca in much higher numbers.
