Illustrative stock photo (source: Sme)
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Slovakia closed its schools, shops and borders earlier than any other country after Italy. Meanwhile, politicians and TV anchors embraced masks even before the government made them mandatory, Bloomberg wrote in its recent piece about how Slovakia has been particularly fast at accepting measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Slovakia has recorded 22 coronavirus casualties as of April 29, which puts the country among the lowest number of deaths per capita.
“Speed is of the essence,” Eva Schernhammer, head of the epidemiology department at the Medical University in Vienna, said by phone. “It would be ideal to contain the epidemic at a stage when you can trace back contacts of every single new case. In hindsight, Slovakia did the right thing.”
Bloomberg noticed the closing of schools in the Bratislava region two days after the first infected patient tested positive on March 6. It also noticed the importance of the supervised quarantine of people returning from abroad.
“If the trend is maintained, we can say we’ve handled the situation as one of the best countries,” said Martin Smatana, the head of the government Institute for Health Policy, which models the virus’ spread. “In the majority of the population, the virus isn’t spreading,“ Bloomberg summed up.
