COVID Vaccination Launched in Slovakia, Krcmery First to Get Jab

Nitra, December 26 (TASR) – Vaccination against coronavirus was launched in Slovakia on Saturday evening, with the first jab given to infectious disease expert Vladimir Krcmery, 60, at Faculty Hospital in Nitra.

Krcmery told the media shortly afterwards that he was feeling well. “We’ve won a bet that there would be a vaccine by Christmas. It involved a lot of effort. We’ve become the first country around where vaccination was launched,” said Krcmery.

Infectious disease expert Zuzana Kristufkova, a member of the Government’s advisory team, welcomed the launch of vaccination against coronavirus in Slovakia, stating that this will allow the country to “return back to life”.

“Millions of people have already been vaccinated and there’s no doubt that it’s safe,” she said at Nitra Faculty Hospital.

The first 9,750 doses of a vaccine against coronavirus from Pfizer/BioNTech arrived in Slovakia on Saturday. They were subsequently stored in a deep-freeze container at Faculty Hospital in Nitra, before being distributed also to F.D. Roosevelt Faculty Hospital in Banska Bystrica, Louis Pasteur University Hospital in Kosice and University Hospital in Bratislava.

Slovakia, which has a population of almost 5.5 million, has signed contracts for a total of 18 million doses from six producers, while it’s expected that 3.3 million people will be given jabs.

The first groups to be vaccinated include health-care professionals, nursing home staff and people involved with critical infrastructure. The second wave of vaccination should concern residents of care homes, the elderly older than 65 and the chronically ill. People who represent a high risk in terms of spreading the infection should be vaccinated as part of the third wave and members of the general public older than 18 in the fourth one.