Press Conference on current epidemiological situation 19/5/2021
Head of IZA Mr. Mišík
Good afternoon. I will briefly present the epidemiological situation in Slovakia. It is fortunately still improving. After long time, we now have under 100 ventilated patients in hospitals. The intensive care beds are being freed again. The trend is continuing with around 20% decrease in different indicators, so the pace of improvement stays more or less same.
Positive is that in all neighboring countries the situation is almost identical. So, we do not have to be afraid currently that any new wave of the infections would come from these country.
In hospitals, we admit less than 50 patients a day already. As I mentioned, there are less than 100 ventilated patients, so the beds in intensive care units are being freed gradually, and only the half of such Covid beds are occupied at the moment.
As for the vaccination, almost 1.5 million persons have received at least the first dose, which is an increase by 11% compared to last week. From persons that can currently receive vaccine in Slovakia, thus a population of 16+ people, already 30% have received at least the first dose.
Compared to last week, this is an increase by 2.7 percentage points. So, in short future, the vaccination share should increase by about 3 percentage points weekly. We already have almost 700 000 fully vaccinated people, which is almost 14% more than last week.
If we look at the age categories, we see a significant increase compared to last month data.
The categories of 70+ and 80+ are the most vaccinated ones, at the rate of approximately 70%
vaccinated population by the first dose. The highest increased compared to last month was in the age category of 60+ by 20 percentage points.
There are regional differences in vaccination in Slovakia. The most vaccinated districts are Bratislava, Banska Bystrica, Košice, Prešov, and Zvolen, where it is around 30% of population.
On the other hand, there are districts where the vaccination share is only about 15%.
Currently, there are approximately 200 000 people waiting for their appointment in the waiting room system. At the moment, we vaccinate around 20 000 people a day. Of course, the number of registered people is still increasing, but by using simple math we could say that there are people for around 10 vaccinating days in the system right now. On the map you see the red districts where there are the most waiting people. Specifically in Bratislava, around 46 000 people are still waiting for their appointment. In overall, in western Slovakia, there is the highest number of people waiting to be vaccinated. The least, around 73 people, are waiting for appointment in district Medzilaborce.
When it comes to Covid Automat, we continue to apply purely regional principles based on the new rules of the Covid Automat. We have quite wide range of colors of our districts at the moment, ranging from 2 burgundy ones to two yellow ones. This is the map of division of districts for next week, you can see the districts that improved their position compared to last week marked by green dots. Skalica, on the other hand, has worsened its situation, from pink to red level. In majority of districts, however, the situation has improved.
Thank you.
Questions:
Q: Minister, you had meeting with the party SaS yesterday at the ministry regarding the possible further changes to Covid Automat. How did this meeting go and what did you agree on?
We agreed on the principles that we will apply in the new Covid Automat. The main momentum should be the greater freedom for vaccinated people. So far, the works are still underway, the proposals have been presented, we will meet in this format every week. If any consensus will be reached, we will inform you.
Q: Mr. Sulik communicated that you also agreed that the range of colors could be changed – there would be less than 7 levels. Is this possible?
ML: One of the principles that we agreed on was that we will not communicate any information to media yet.
Q: Daily we make around 5000 PCR tests. Is this number sufficient?
Mr. Misik: With PCR tests we are close to the level of positivity considered by ECDC as sufficient, 4%, so we should do a bit more tests to get under this level. Then we can be sure we test enough to identify as many positive persons as possible. At this point, if somebody received a positive antigen test and does not have symptoms, such person should definitely register for confirmation test by PCR method. We already added this possibility into the system – when registering for PCR test, one of the possible indications that the person can fill is the prior positive result of antigen test without symptoms.
Q: What is the ideal amount of tests that should be done?
Mr. Misik: It could be as high number to reach for example 2% of positivity rate, but surely not crossing over the 4% limit.
Q: Minister, are you considering such option that the antigen testing places would turn into PCR testing places?
ML: Yes, we are considering the possibility of merging the antigen and PCR testing places.
Q: We heard several times about testing of wastewater for the possible infection outbreaks.
In what stage is this issue now and when could such testing start?
ML: It is being done already, such system of testing works. We just agreed with the UVZ on expanding this system. At the moment, this testing is being run by UVZ only in some parts of Slovakia, and we would like to expand it to the whole country. Some technical equipment is necessary for this of course, so we were negotiating this. But as far as I am aware, such testing is already being done in some parts of Slovakia. In turn of several weeks, it could be done nation-wide.
Q: As for the temporary vaccination certificates that you mentioned yesterday in your video, could you explain in more details when and how this could work? Will vaccinated people have to go to their GP to get it?
ML: It will work in the following way – those who will be vaccinated from Saturday will already receive new two-language vaccination confirmation and the system will be prepared in a way that latest from Monday, if an applicant clicks on the korona.gov.sk page, he/she will find
the option to apply for receiving this new vaccination confirmation, which will be sent immediately on the email address he/she chooses.
Q: So there will a stamp and everything?
ML: There is no need for doctor´s stamp, this person will receive the full report on the vaccination, which will be an official document by the Slovak Republic. This will work until the launch of the so-called European green passports on 26 June.
Q: Will this be issued for both first and second dose?
ML: I am going to see this document today, so I will have to further inspect it to answer these questions, but there should be two options for requesting this document – for confirmation on first or second dose.
I want to remind one more thing. The EU has agreed on launching the joint European vaccination certificates from 26 June, and the system is being set in a way that the individual countries will be able to recognize and validate the correctness of those data. The fact that there is an initiative of the Central European countries to recognize the certificates on the multilateral level, is to enable earlier travelling among these countries. But the systems of the countries are not yet mutually connected. At the moment we know how the Hungarian vaccination certificate looks like, but so far, we do not have any possibility to verify the data on such certificate. So, I understand this activity, but it preceded the joint European solution.
So, on 26 June the European green passport will be used, and then there is even a 6 week transitional period – so the EU takes additional 6 weeks to tune the systems to work efficiently.
So, these activities of Central European countries are bit beyond what the EU has agreed on.
Q: But some people already plan to go for holiday in mid-June for example, so they should know which documents they should have to legally get to foreign countries.
ML: Yes, from Monday, people will be able to download their vaccination record, so they will have temporary document to use before the European certificates are launched – so until 26 June.
Q: What about people who overcome the disease already?
ML: Such people also should have access to their data. We are now going to discuss this issue, as so far we dealt with vaccination certificates only. In 10 minutes I have to leave because we are going to discuss also the antigen tests, PCR tests and certificates on overcoming the disease.
Q: In Hungary people are getting vaccinated with unregistered vaccines such as Sputnik or the Chinese vaccine too. Austria already said it will not accept Sputnik vaccination. What position will Slovakia take in this matter?
ML: I will know this only after the negotiations of the Council of Experts and then after the Government meeting.
Q: When will this be?
Q: So from 26 June, all people will need to request a new vaccination certificate, with the EU based QR code?
ML: If they included their email address in the registration form, I suppose they will receive these new confirmations automatically.
Q: Is it certain that all people, even those vaccinated right in the beginning, are registered in NCZI database and will be able to access their vaccination data?
ML: Surely yes.
Q: Will Slovakia in the end buy the full 2 million doses of Sputnik as planned previously or less as you suggested later?
ML: I cannot tell this right now. We have meeting at the Ministry of Finance today at 15:00, I will comment on this question later.
Q: Some opposition politicians want to ask for your dismissal from the position of Minister.
Do you feel responsibility for such late issuance of joint vaccination confirmations?
ML: Yes, there was a mistake made right in the beginning, because we should have issued only the unified vaccination confirmations right from the end of December when the vaccination started in Slovakia. This problem could have been avoided. We all focused on the date 26 June and to make sure the European certifications would work. Then this Central European initiative was made and the need for unified and foreign language certifications was created.
We are working on it and latest on Monday it will be solved.
Q: Will it be possible to receive different appointments for second dose of Astra Zeneca, as before the vaccination was done mostly during weekends and now people are invited on weekdays when they work. Or they are sick and cannot change their date of appointment.
ML: I cannot answer all these little problems at the moment. I know about these issues but there are persons at the Ministry who are working on it and can provide you better answers through our spokesperson. But it should surely be possible to change the appointments – we have fully functional call centers, we have email addresses, so these problems can surely be solved.
Q: Pfizer should be now available to all. Could you confirm this information?
ML: Yes, we again opened the vaccination for all persons aged 16+. So, the vaccine from Pfizer is now available also to persons 16+.
Q: Could children be vaccinated before September in preferential way so they can safely return to schools at this time?
ML: So far children are being vaccinated only in the US, it is not yet approved by EMA in Europe.
If it will be approved, we will surely start vaccinating the pupils too.
Q: What are we going to do specifically to attract another 1.5 million people to register for the vaccination in the waiting room?
ML: The question is whether any campaign can persuade people who do not want to get vaccinated. We will wait what this opening of vaccination for 16+ will do in the waiting room system, and then we will see what further steps to take. There are many possible ways how to address this issue. We will need to consult it and decide. We currently have around 200 000 people in waiting room, and this is the number we had two weeks ago and one week ago too, so the numbers of applicants are growing. It would be also good if we could receive more of Astra Zeneca vaccines, so we could again include this vaccine in our strategy for first dose receivers too.
