Sabaka: Neither COVID-19, Nor Monkeypox Should Spoil This Summer Holiday Season

Bratislava, Jun 9 (TASR) – Neither COVID-19, nor monkeypox should damage the summer holiday season this year, said infectologist Peter Sabaka on Thursday, adding that travelling abroad is finally safe for the first time in two years.

However, Sabaka recommends that those who haven’t recovered from COVID-19 and haven’t been vaccinated should get jabbed before their trip. Good news for holidaymakers is that no country has a significantly worse epidemic situation that Slovakia at the moment, he said.

According to Sabaka, the situation for travelling abroad today is different, as individual coronavirus variants and subvariants are more-or-less proportionally dispersed around the world. “So there’s no variant or subvariant that we could bring into Slovakia,” he said.

People who have recovered from COVID-19 or have been vaccinated have no reason to worry about travelling, stated Sabaka. “Even if they get infected, the disease shouldn’t have worse consequences for them than if they were infected with, for example, flu,” he explained, adding that other people are advised to be inoculated with three vaccine doses before going on holiday.

According to Sabaka, monkeypox is far from posing the same risk as COVID-19, as it is a less contagious virus. He noted that even in countries that have confirmed its presence, there are relatively few cases and they are rising linearly. “We should remember that the virus is transmitted via close contact with the infected person and not through the air like COVID-19. If a person is not exposed to close contact with several people in areas with a higher incidence of monkeypox, such as London or Madrid, the risk of infection is minimal,” stated the infectologist.