Health Minister: COVID-hospitalisations Not Rising as Fast as Before

Bratislava, February 3 (TASR) – The number of patients with COVID-19 in Slovak hospitals isn’t rising as fast as before, with the situation being “relatively serious” especially in Bratislava, said Health Minister Marek Krajci (OLANO) at a press conference on Tuesday.

There are currently 3,626 people with COVID-19 in Slovak hospitals, said Krajci, adding that the country in general is now in the black colour, while there are some red and claret districts, while only Velky Krtis in southern Slovakia is light-red.

The most serious situation is currently in the districts of Patrizanske (Trencin region), Sala, Zlate Moravce (both Nitra region), Revuca (Banska Bystrica region), Roznava (Kosice region), Banovce nad Bebravou (Trencin region), Hlohovec (Trnava region), Trnava and Ziar nad Hronom (Banska Bystrica region).

“Most districts have seen improvements, but it’s only a 22.3-percent gross reduction in prevalence, which is far less than we had expected,” said Krajci. He claimed that the countrywide testing for coronavirus in the autumn squeezed the number of positives in Slovakia by 58 percent. Krajci believes that the current situation is due to a more infectious variant of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, hospitals are coping well with the influx of patients. Compared to late 2020, the situation in the northern and southern parts of the country has reversed, being now worse in the south and in Bratislava. Nitra has stabilised, so it won’t need to transport patients to hospitals in other districts any longer.

The minister also announced that AstraZeneca will deliver fewer than 58,000 doses of vaccine against coronavirus to Slovakia as announced earlier, but he wasn’t more specific.

A Slovak producers will deliver to Slovak hospitals syringes that will allow making six instead of five shots of vaccine from a single ampoule with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, said Krajci.