Slovakia Now Has The Biggest Covid Death Rate In The World

Officials in the Czech Republic have warned that the country’s health system is on the brink of “absolute exhaustion” and may need help from abroad, as central Europe braces for a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Over the past two weeks the country has recorded 968 new cases of coronavirus per 100,000 people, the EU’s highest infection rate in per-capita terms, forcing many hospitals to delay non-Covid-related treatment.

Vladimir Cerny, deputy health minister, told a press conference on Tuesday that if the trend continued, hospital capacity would be overwhelmed within two to three weeks, and said that the government was considering asking other EU states to take in patients.

“We are starting to talk about help from abroad. So far, the only official offer came from Germany, which offered a place for nine patients,” Cerny said. “The current free capacity of hospitals in the Czech Republic is about 15 per cent.”

Cerny’s warning comes amid broader concerns in central Europe about a renewed upturn in caseloads across the region, accompanied in some countries by the arrival of the variant that first emerged in the UK.

Slovakia — where a one-day screening exercise earlier this month found that the strain was responsible for 74 per cent of new cases — has suffered the highest number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in the world over the past week.

Foreign minister Ivan Korcok said on Monday that he would ask other EU countries to send additional vaccines to Slovakia to help it cope with the “tragic” situation in the 5.4m-strong nation, where the death toll has topped 100 per day several times in the past two weeks.

“I fully realise that other countries have a vaccine shortage as well but Slovakia now, also based on the fact that we have the highest death rate, at the moment needs it most,” he told reporters in Brussels, according to Reuters.