Slovakia follows its neighbor Austria and imposes a general lockdown for two weeks starting this Thursday.

The Deputy Prime Minister Richard Sulík announced on Wednesday in Bratislava.

There are no exceptions for vaccinated people.

The schools should remain open.

Prime Minister Eduard Heger initially failed to reach a consensus in the heterogeneous four-party coalition.

Stephan Löwenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

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However, President Zuzana Čaputová successfully put pressure in the direction of general closings: the "fooling around" must end, she said in a speech on Tuesday in which she also sharply criticized the spread of false information.

Only surpassed by Cayman Islands

On Wednesday, the number of new infections in the country with around 5.5 million inhabitants exceeded 10,000 for the first time.

The seven-day incidence of more than 1,300 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants is by far the highest in Europe and is only surpassed by the Cayman Islands worldwide.

More than 3,200 corona patients currently have to be treated as inpatients, which, according to the health authorities, has crossed the threshold to a humanitarian crisis.

According to official information, eight out of ten patients treated for Covid diseases in Slovak hospitals are not vaccinated or only incompletely vaccinated. Nationwide, only around 43 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. The vaccination rate in the European Union is only lower in Romania and Bulgaria. Only recently has the demand for (first) vaccinations increased again somewhat in Slovakia.

The reluctance of the Slovaks to vaccinate may also have something to do with the fact that the government implemented an opaque and contradicting vaccination strategy at the beginning of this year.

The then Prime Minister Igor Matovič ordered the Russian vaccine Sputnik, which was not certified in the EU, on his own, but it was never used.

Because of the arbitrariness of the then head of government, there was a government crisis in April.

Compulsory vaccination push called "fascist"

Since then, the conservative Eduard Heger has been Prime Minister, his party leader Matovič has stepped into the second row.

Foreign Minister Ivan Korčok told the FAZ at the time that there was a significant part of the population who trusted the Russian vaccine more than a Western one.

Prime Minister Heger recently expressed the idea of ​​introducing compulsory vaccinations for older people, for whom a disease with Covid-19 poses a particularly high risk.

But so far he has not been able to convince the coalition partners, significant parts of the opposition around the former social democratic head of government Robert Fico and the right-wing extremist leader Marian Kotleba described Heger's plans as "fascist".

In late summer there were angry protests right outside the gates of parliament.

Practically all intensive care beds in Slovakia are currently occupied by people with severe Covid disease.

Health Minister Vladimír Lengvarský has therefore repeatedly advocated a general lockdown.

However, the pressure to do this has increased since Austria - whose “lockdown for the unvaccinated” Bratislava had previously oriented itself - imposed exit restrictions for everyone and the closure of shops (except for basic services) and restaurants.

In Slovakia, various restrictions in public life came into force earlier this week, mainly affecting unvaccinated people.

They were not allowed to enter numerous shops.

According to media reports, however, the restrictions were barely monitored and consequently little followed.