People are allowed to go out only for work, buying food and toiletries, visiting a doctor or a pharmacy, to walk their pets, accompany children to school, go to the post office, to the bank, to a car service, visit ill relatives and walk in nature within the district of their residence.
Stricter rules apply in the most affected districts of Námestovo, Tvrdošín, Dolný Kubín (all Žilina region) and Bardejov (Prešov region). People in these districts will be able to use exemptions from the ban only if they have a negative PCR test or antigen test result. It must not be older than October 23. Meanwhile, on Friday morning trial mass testing for Covid-19 was launched with a delay and some complications in several districts of the Orava area and the Bardejov district in eastern Slovakia, due to a shortage of health-care personnel and certificates to be handed to people together with the result. A total of 180,000 individuals are expected to be tested at 235 sites, with hundreds of soldiers, police officers, firefighters, health and administrative personnel involved in the project.
The planned mass-testing event for coronavirus all over Slovakia will take place according to schedule in the weekends of October 30th - November 1st and November 6th-8th, when all inhabitants aged between 10 and 65 are asked to take part, foreigners included. After the first weekend of testing, only those who can show a negative test result - be it from the mass-testing or from a private lab on demand - can move freely. Most probably another week-long ban on free movement will be introduced afterwards as the public is encouraged to attend both weekends of mass-testing.
The second-level students of elementary schools (grades 5 - 9) will switch to online classes as of Monday, October 26, with schools due to remain closed until November 27. First-level students of elementary schools and preschoolers will continue going to schools normally for the time being. Shops and other businesses remain open.
The measures adopted by the Central Crisis Committee on Thursday should be followed up by the systematic testing of large groups of employees, stated the Prime Minister Igor Matovič. The state plans to arrange with employers so that they can provide regular testing of their employees. The same goes for facilities providing social services. The state should provide the test kits, but it will be up to employers to carry out the testing. Large employers' organisations have been worried that sending many employees into a 10 day quarantine for not getting tested will negatively affect production.
