Bratislava Councillor Berka Has Coronavirus: I Thought It Was Cold from Partying

Bratislava, August 23 (TASR) – Adam Berka, who’s a member of the Bratislava city council and the local council of the Old Town borough, announced on Facebook on Sunday that he’s been tested positive for coronavirus.

Noting that he doesn’t know where he could have been infected, he said that he experienced some mild symptoms in the morning of Sunday, August 16, but he thought that it was a mere cold.

“I ascribed it to too much partying, dancing and sweaty T-shirts,” wrote Berka, who then listed an array of bars and similar locations he visited in Bratislava and Nitra last weekend.

Going on to criticise coronavirus testing in Slovakia, Berka said that he spent Monday and Tuesday at home, before getting better on Wednesday. While he was still unwell, he registered online for a coronavirus test.

“However, I still haven’t been given an appointment,” he wrote, adding that people returning from abroad are obviously being preferred. In the meantime, he decided to go for a test to a Bratislava hospital without appointment on Thursday.

“Registered people were given preference, so I had to wait; there were ten people in front of me. The whole thing took around an hour, including the testing. I received the results after two and a half days, it was by an SMS now, at night,” wrote Berka, complaining that Slovakia is performing too few tests, hence its good results.

Slovakia carried out around 3,500 daily tests on workdays of the past week (some 1,700 on Saturday). Meanwhile, the seven-day rolling average of positive tests has risen to 80, but the health authorities claim that most of the tests in recent days concerned people who had been traced as contacts of individuals tested positive earlier or people who recently returned from abroad.

Five people have died of COVID-19 in Slovakia within the past month.