Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Measures to tackle the Omicron wave come into force this week. Acting Police Corps president chooses investigators of major corruption cases to fill police leadership positions. Cabinet okays the defence deal with the US, but the opposition wants to debate it in the house. The general prosecutor is eager to cooperate with Russia.
Government prepares for a new kind of epidemic
It is safe to say, as of mid January, that Slovakia has missed its chance to prepare for the Omicron wave with the best defence to hand, vaccines.
The regional director of the WHO’s Europe office, Hans Kluge, said he was “deeply concerned” with the Omicron variant moving east, adding that Europe has yet to see its full impact “in countries where levels of vaccination uptake are lower, and where we will see more severe disease in the unvaccinated”. This, sadly, is the case of Slovakia, where only half of the country has been vaccinated against the coronavirus.