Several schools around Slovakia have had to close some classrooms after coronavirus infection was detected or suspected there. (source: SME)
This is your overview of news on Thursday, September 10, 2020. Today in Slovakia is a news digest prepared by the Spectator staff at the end of every working day and accessible to all readers free of charge. If you appreciate our service, buy our online subscription to support our work. Thank you for being our reader.
Flu vaccinations to start in October
Experts point out that the vaccination against flu may be more important in the year of the coronavirus pandemic than in any year before.
The Health Ministry said that there will be 240,000 vaccines against flu delivered in Slovakia which is a similar number to that of 2019.
Pharmacists noted that they order the vaccines based on how many people were vaccinated in the previous year. Slovakia is among the populations in the EU with the lowest vaccination rate, around 4 percent.
Mijatović writes to Slovak MPs about abortions
After 111 international organisations expressed their concern about the draft amendment changing the rules on abortion, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, has warned against the planned changes.
“The new draft law again intends to introduce restrictions on accessing safe and legal abortion services,” Mijatović wrote in a letter addressed to Speaker of Parliament Boris Kollár and three other chairs of the parliamentary committees, referring to the proposal intended to extend the mandatory waiting period from 48 to 96 hours and expand its application to all situations except when a woman’s health is at immediate risk.
Abortions are a hot topic now in Slovakia since the parliament is dealing with a draft amendment to the law on abortions in the second reading and is expected to vote on the legislation during its September session.
Coronavirus in Slovakia:
Slovakia reported 178 new coronavirus infections as of Thursday morning.
The crisis staff has added the northern-Slovak district of Tvrdošín to the red list, for at least ten days. Read more about measures in red-listed districts here. (TA3)
Speaker of Parliament Boris Kollár is in voluntary five-day quarantine as of Thursday, after he returned from a foreign country not on the red list.
Several schools have closed entire classrooms after coronavirus infections were detected among pupils. This has occurred around Slovakia - reports of closed classrooms are from the Žilina district, Trnava, the Bratislava district of Vrakuňa and others.
In other news:
The largest distributor of foreign press in the country, Interpress Slovakia, announced the termination of its business and the start of liquidation after nearly 30 years on the market. This makes foreign press hard to get in Bratislava.
President Zuzana Čaputová suggested the family of Jozef Chovanec, who died following an incident at the Brussels Charleroi airport in 2018, should request that a Slovak expert join the Belgian investigation team. “I will ask the Belgian side to consider this request by the bereaved,” the president told the press on Thursday.
The parliamentary constitutional affairs committee has started grilling applicants for the post of Constitutional Court judge which has been vacant since the resignation of Mojmír Mamojka over his contacts with Marian Kočner.
The police have brought charges in a major drug case. Two members of the international organised group operating in several countries, both Dutch citizens, have been detained in the Netherlands, awaiting the decision of the Dutch bodies about extradition to Slovakia. The case is linked to the seizing of a record amount of meth originating from Mexico in Nitra in July.
The Prešov regional veterinary authorities have ordered measures aimed at preventing the spread of the American foulbrood disease that affects bees. An apiary in the village of Dulova Ves in the Prešov district has been identified as a hotspot of the infection. (SITA)
Two Slovak women have received the European Tech Women Awards during London Tech Week. The award went to Petra Kotuliakova of the Aj Ty v IT organisation and Maria Virčíková from the Matsuko company.
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