Domestic
Slovakia warns against Covid vaccine – stops purchases
Published 2025-04-25
The Slovak government has decided to temporarily pause purchases of COVID-19 vaccines, pending a safety review by the country's Academy of Sciences, Prime Minister Robert Fico announced at a press conference on Wednesday.
The background is an agreement from 2023, under a previous government, which obliges Slovakia to receive an additional 300,000 vaccine doses at a cost of approximately 5.7 million euros. Some suppliers were not mentioned by name.
– We have an expert opinion from a registered expert who says that the vaccines used in Slovakia contained extremely high levels of DNA and other substances that the manufacturer did not report in the package insert. Therefore, the decision to neither receive nor pay for the remaining vaccines for the time being is correct, said Fico .
The government's decision follows a recommendation from Peter Kotlar, the government's special investigator on pandemic management, who has previously also generally questioned the safety of mRNA-based vaccines.
The decision is criticized
The government is opposed by the Slovak pharmaceutical authority SUKL, which believes that the expert warnings lack scientific support and that it is the warnings that are dangerous, not the vaccines. The authority is also considering filing a police report for “spreading panic.”
– Fico is hiding his political failures behind Kotlar's conspiratorial delusions, the party said in a statement.
Prime Minister Fico, who himself chose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19, has long been critical of previous governments' handling of the pandemic and their focus on mass vaccinations. During the pandemic, he also led a protest against the restrictions in place at the time.
Neither Pfizer nor Moderna have commented on the information so far.
Subjected to attempted murder
The fierce political opposition to Fico was expressed when he was subjected to an assassination attempt during a political rally just under a year ago . He was shot several times in the head and chest by a liberal extremist and suffered life-threatening injuries but survived.
Fico's speech can be seen and heard in its entirety below:
https://video.twimg.com/amplif....y_video/191475811883