UPDATE - Romania To Send 15 Medical Workers To Slovakia To Respond To COVID-19 - Foreign Ministry

PRAGUE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd February, 2021) In response to Slovakia's appeal to the EU countries with a request to send medical workers to help respond to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, the Romanian Foreign Ministry announced that 15 doctors and nurses would be brought to the country for this purpose, Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok told reporters.

Last week, the Slovak government urged the EU to send 10 doctors and 25 nurses for at least one month to Slovakia to address COVID-19. Romania was the first to respond to the call, Korcok said.

"Our Romanian colleagues have promised to send 15 medical workers to Slovakia, both doctors and nurses. Today, at a meeting of EU foreign ministers, I asked my colleagues about the possible allocation of vaccines against COVID-19 to us.

However, none of the EU countries currently has capabilities to do this," he said.

Slovakia is now in one of the first places in the world in terms of the number of deaths from coronavirus per one million inhabitants: about one in three of those hospitalized dies. Hospitals are overcrowded with patients and there is a lack of trained staff. On Monday, a new maximum was recorded in terms of the number of hospitalized people - 3,963, of whom 299 are in intensive care, and 347 are on ventilators.

In total, during the pandemic, 292,700 people got infected in the country, and 6,577 people died. The population of Slovakia is 5.46 million.