Slovakia signs deal to acquire 2 million doses of Sputnik V

PRAGUE >> Slovakia signed a deal to acquire 2 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, Prime Minister Igor Matovic said Monday.

Matovic said his country will get 1 million shots in the next two months while another million will arrive in May and June.

Slovakia is the second European Union country to use the vaccine, which hasn’t been approved by the European Medicines Agency, after Hungary. It hasn’t been registered by Slovakia’s drug authority, but the deal was made possible by Health Minister Marek Krajci’s approval.

Matovic said the nation of 5.4 million will be able to speed up the vaccination program by 40%.

Slovakia has so far administered 305,832 shots of Western vaccines that it has received through an EU deal. To speed up what is considered a slow EU delivery, the country started to look for other options.

“Nobody has a recipe other than the necessity to inoculate,” Krajci said.

Slovakia became the country with the most COVID-19 deaths by size of population in the world amid a surge of a fastspreading British coronavirus variant.

The number of COVID-19 patients in Slovakia’s hospitals reached a new record high of 4,008 on Sunday — a situation that has recently prompted leaders to appeal for outside help.

The seven- day rolling average of daily deaths didn’t rise or increase over the past two weeks, remaining at 1.79 deaths per 100,000 people since Feb. 14 till Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The country is planning to tighten its already strict lockdown on Wednesday.

Matovic’s coalition government originally rejected a plan to acquire Sputnik V on Feb 18 after one of his four coalition partners vetoed the move.

Matovic kept the deal secret, announcing it on Monday only after a military cargo plane with the 200,000 doses of the vaccine landed in the eastern Slovak city of Kosice.

The move will likely cause further tensions in his center-right coalition.

Deputy Prime Minister Veronika Remisova, who heads the For People party that didn’t agree with the plan previously, said any vaccine to be used in her country needs to be registered by the EMA, the EU’s drug regulator.

One member of parliament for her party, Tomas Valasek, immediately announced he was leaving the coalition over the deal.

“Not in my name,” Valasek said about it.

Krajci said the authorities might start to administer the vaccine — possibly in about two weeks.

“I’m glad that the citizens of Slovakia will have this vaccine at their disposal,” he said, adding it will be administered on a voluntary basis.

With Western vaccines rolling out slowly to the EU’s 27 member states, Polish President Andrzej Duda spoke Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and asked him about the possibility of Poland buying Chinese-made vaccines.

Duda aide Krzysztof Szczerski said whether or not Poland ends up buying the Chinese vaccines will be a decision of the Polish government, but that Duda welcomed the Chinese leader’s willingness to make his country’s vaccines “a global public good.”

So far, Poland, like Slovakia, is only using the Western-made vaccines of Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

DEAR AMY >> My mom frequently “shares” things via social media that she has no right to share.

She’ll take a picture that we have posted on Facebook or Instagram and post it herself; (almost as if she was the one who took it), often relaying the story of the picture as if it’s her own — basically “stealing” it and reposting it herself.

Recently, she posted on Facebook about my and my fiancé’s wedding date, stating, “So excited for a [wedding month] wedding!” and tagging us.

This was before we (the actual couple) had even announced it.

I told her to take it down and explained about what a violation it was.

She eventually said she understood where we were coming from and took down the post, but within the same day posted a funny story about OUR (meaning mine and my fiancé’s) dog that I had told her.

Neither of us had shared that on social media, ourselves. It was via phone conversation. We live across the country.

I know the easy answer is to not post what we don’t want shared, but she’ll post things we tell her via phone, too.

It’s hard for her to be an empty-nester. But I want her to understand that the only way we’ll tell her about things is if she can respect that we don’t want it “shared” with the world.

If I don’t talk to her or tell her about our lives, she lays in a huge guilt trip about how she “doesn’t even know us anymore.”

— Too Much Sharing

DEAR TOO MUCH >> You seem to have explained the implicit privacy contract that family members should adhere to on social media. I wonder if your mother understands how posts and photos can be shared with people completely outside your (and her) circle.

This is especially a violation when it comes to weddings, pregnancies, job changes, and the like — because her choice to post about these things before you are ready could harm (or ruin) other relationships.

She does not have the right to “take” your personal story and broadcast it widely.

Strictly speaking, reposting photos of you without your permission is actually — illegal.

You should tell her that if she continues to do this, you will feel forced to disengage from her completely on social media. Say that you consider this both a last resort and a natural consequence of her (extreme) violation of your privacy.

Otherwise, check your FB privacy settings to see how you can “review” any posts you’re tagged in. You can also control who sees posts where you’re tagged.

DEAR AMY >> I’m concerned about misinformation in your response to “Mum About Medical,” who didn’t like to answer questions regarding her COVID vaccination status.

You wrote: “Mainly, the vaccination protects you from the more serious illness caused by the coronavirus. But the vaccination also helps to protect others, because if you don’t contract COVID-19, you won’t be spreading it.”

That is incorrect. Vaccinated people can be asymptomatic carriers.