PM: Slovakia to Organise Repeated Mass Testing, Two Dozen Districts Exempt
Bratislava, November 2 (TASR) – Slovakia will organise a repeated mass testing for the coronavirus, but districts with positivity rates below 0.7 percent in the testing this past weekend will be exempt from the second round, Prime Minister Igor Matovic (OLaNO) announced after a meeting of the Central Crisis Management Team on Monday.
The exemption will concern 25 districts and the country’s two most populous cities – Bratislava and Kosice. Slovakia has 79 districts in total.
The second round will concern 54 percent of the country’s population. Matovic conceded that the Central Crisis Management Team was surprised to see such low figures in some districts to come out from the testing last Saturday and Sunday.
Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad (OLaNO) said that the list of districts that will see the repeated testing will most probably be released on Tuesday morning.
When asked about some detailed data from the first round that took place in the entire country under the auspices of the military, Nad said that this isn’t a priority. “We aren’t a statistics office,” he said tersely.
Chief of the General Staff Daniel Zmeko said that the military deployed 95 percent of its personnel for the first round. Out of 13,500 people in the Armed Forces, 1,200 soldiers are now infected or isolated due to suspicion of infection with the coronavirus, added Zmeko.
