BRATISLAVA (dpa-AFX) – In Slovakia, strict exit restrictions apply again in the fight against the corona virus from Saturday up to and including November 1. The government announced this on Thursday evening after a more than eleven-hour meeting of the national Corona crisis team. Across the country, people are only allowed to leave their homes for urgent purposes for more than a week. This includes going to work, a corona test and covering basic needs, but also for short walks in nature.
As Minister of Economic Affairs Richard Sulik said, the state does not close the deal. Because of the exit restrictions, however, most of them will have no customers – apart from grocery stores, pharmacies and petrol stations. Schools across the country will only be open to the first four grades for one month from Monday. The older students have to switch to online teaching.
In four particularly badly affected districts on the Polish border, even stricter regulations apply. There, people who cannot show a negative corona test are almost only allowed to go to the test laboratory, and commuting to work is also prohibited. In these districts, the first regionally limited phase of a planned mass testing of almost the entire population is to begin on Friday. On the next two weekends, all people over ten years old will be tested across the country.
By Friday, the Slovak health authorities had confirmed 35,330 cases for the 5.4 million inhabitant country. At 115, the total number of corona-related deaths is lower than in most other EU countries, but Slovakia only counts deceased for whom another cause of death has been excluded. According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in Slovakia was 347.0 within 14 days – the EU peak in the neighboring Czech Republic was 1066.3. / ct / DP / he
