Unofficial Translation
Press Conference after the Government session 14/12/2021 Vladimír Lengvarský, Minister of Health
Ladies and gentlemen, given that at 17:00 I need to be in Parliament, I will try to very shortly comment on results from today´s Government session.
The Government has approved the resolution by which there will be a night curfew between 20:00 and 5:00 from 17 December 2021. Therefore, the only restriction to the daily movement will be by the decrees on the operation of different establishments, which require OP regime. By this resolution, the ban on family visits is also lifted – throughout the day, people can move freely for any purpose. Of course there are some exceptions from the night curfew too, but significantly fewer than before – namely the journey to work, to doctor, care for close person, walking pet, travelling abroad, ensuring social services, participation in church services, etc.
From 17 December, in OP regime, it will be still possible to visit various establishments, and also all body care services will be opened, as well as galleries, museums and libraries. In basic regime, as applicable until now, will only function essential shops and services. All these details will be specified by the decrees of the Public Health Authority, which will be published in short time, I suppose tomorrow, to be able to apply from Friday.
Nothing changes in terms of accommodation, that means that as announced before, from 25 December the accommodation facilities can start providing services for people in OP regime, who will need also a negative test.
This is all regarding the measures. To conclude we are switching to the night curfew and thus allowing also the visits during Christmas holidays throghout day, and all other measures apply as before, with the expection of broadening the open services to all body care services, and also galleries, museum and libraries. As for other measures, nothing else is changing.
Matej Misik, head of IZA, Ministry of Health
Good evening. I will shortly comment on current epidemiological situation. As announced already last week, some indicators are continuing to improve. The number of new cases is decreasing, and also the number of hospitalizations decreased slightly. There was still slight increase in numbers of patients on artificial lung ventilation, however. The daily average number of deaths has also decreased. Nevertheless, these are still very high numbers and hospitals are still filled almost up to their maximum levels.
The number of visits of emergency health services has also continued to decrease. This decrease is visible throughout all regions in Slovakia.
As for admissions to hospitals we see the decrease and it still applies that 80% of admissions to hospitals are unvaccinated persons. The number of admissions per past week was around 320, while the week before it was not less than 400.
The burden on hospitals varies regionally. In Bratislava region, the pressure on hospitals is still growing, in Nitra region it is stable, and in the majority of regions it is decreasing already. We perceive this as very important to as soon as possible release the burden on hospitals and free the hospitals beds, also in relation to threat posed in short future by omicron variant. Although we are saying the situation is improving, the hospitals in Slovakia are still at 82% of the maximum capacities experienced during second wave and we are still admitting hundreds of covid patients daily.
When it comes to vaccination, almost 120 000 persons received booster dose for the past week. The number of first doses decreased to 17 000, some additional delayed numbers might be still added to the system, but we still see this is a decrease in interest in first dose.
Around 630 000 people already have the booster dose, which seems to be very important as for the situation with omicron variant.
That is all from me. My colleaugue Mr. Pavelka will tell you bit more about omicron variant and what preliminary data from the world show so far.
Mr. Pavelka, Ministry of Health
Good evening. We are in the second year of the covid pandemic, but now we have a very strong weapon in the vaccination. The data show clearly that vaccination is the only way out of the pandemic. Thanks to increase in vaccinating booster dose, we are also seeing that we might be getting down from this wave peak.
The omicron variant is probably the most infectious variant we have so far experienced. I would like to draw your attemtion to the example from two European countries. The first is Denmark, which is also by its size comparable to Slovakia. Within a week, the number of new cases has increased dominantly from 59 on 2 December to 703 on 8 December. The Danish Institute estimates that if this trend continues, on 15-16 December, there should be already parity of omicron variant with delta variant. This nicely illustrates how quickly this variant spread in population. I remind that Denmark has vaccination share of 85%. The second example is UK, where last week Monday they recorded only 101 omicron cases. On Saturday this number was already more than 1000 and on Sunday they reported that
already one third of all identified cases in London were made of the omicron variant. Until tomorrow, the omicron variant should be already a dominant variant in UK.
I would also like to draw your attention to the course of disease of the omicron variant.
Media widely report there should be lighter symproms of this disease as experienced in South Africa. There was a study published just few hours ago which shows that 72% of people overcame the covid during delta variant spread in South Africa, therefore large part of population was immunized and thus could have experience lighter course of disease. In Slovakia, the prevalence of infection in last wave was much lower and we therefore cannot compare South Africa with Slovakia. Denmark case might be better for the comparison. If we look at infections older than 7 days, we see that a significant percentage of cases ended up in hospitals, which is very different from the results in South Africa.
The solution to omicron variant is in vaccination. We can manage the fourth wave by administering the booster dose of mRNA vaccine, which shows to be effective protection against this variant. The level of protection effect after second dose is decreasing, however if receiving booster, the protection effect is much higher. The time of receiving the vaccine is also very important and 2-9 weeks after receiving second dose, the effect is still high, so I invite all who are not yet vaccinated to do so. In Slovakia we drastically decreased the time period between second and third dose in order to fight the new variant. So I invite all who are not vaccinated to hurry for their appointment and those who are vaccinated to register for third dose.
We can also look at the effect of overcoming Covid in terms of protection against omicron.
The situation in South Africa shows a high levels of re-infections, which is an important feature of the omicron variant. The protective effect of overcoming the virus decreases with the omicron variant by approximately 25%, so it is around 75%. Interesting is that the effect of booster dose is also 75%, so overcoming the disease and getting booster dose have similar protective effect in the omicron environment. Vaccination is much safer option than getting infected by the virus however.
When we look at vaccination with booster dose in Slovakia, we do not see much regional differences. The regional cities are the leaders. If we look at the vaccination of the age categories, we can see there is clear interest of the most vulnerable person aged 60, 70 or 80 in the booster dose. It is great news that we are progressing with administering the booster dose in Slovakia and every day counts before the omicron variant becomes dominant in Slovakia.
Questions:
Q: How big increase in hospitalizations can we expect with the omicron variant?
Mr. Mišik: We see already today with the delta variant, that 5-7% people from those with the positive PCR tests end up in hospitals. It is hard to compare, but the Danish example so far shows that the severity of omicron variant might be similar, thus requiring similar levels
of hospitalizations. However, we see from other countries that the spread of this variant is extremely fast, leading to high number of positive cases in short time, thus the burder on hospitals can be considerable. We still have around 3400 patients in hospitals now, so the reserve capacities are limited, therefore we still did not proceed with very significant release in measures.
Q: Despite this you lifted the daily curfew. Can we afford relaxation of measures?
Mr. Mišik: The enforceability of the daily curfew showed to be limited. We still recommend strict adherence to preventive measures also when visiting family. Operations are opened in OP regime.
Q: Are there already results of the study of antibodies in the Slovak population?
Mr. Pavelka: The official results are not yet out, so I cannot comment on this, but I can say that it looks like we are much less protected than surrounding countries, we have still lot of people who are not vaccinated and have not overcome the disease. The data is still being evaluated.
Q: So can we really afford relaxing the measures? Do not you expect that the curve will turn up again?
Mr. Mišik: We do expect the turn in curve in any case, even if the measures were very strict.
The pace of increase in other countries experiencing omicron variant is so high that the standard measures applied so far would not have sufficient effect to turn the curve alone anyway. That is why we highlighted the effect of vaccination and administration of booster doses.
Q: The traveling to see family is thus allowed only until 20:00?
Mr. Mišík: Yes.
Q: What about booster for children 12-18?
Mr. Pavelka: This is a question that Council of Experts will discuss.
