A chronically ill elderly man died in Slovakia after being vaccinated

The 79-year-old man suffered from various chronic diseases and was found to be the leading cause of death at autopsy, but fever and wasting as undesirable side effects of the vaccine also contributed to his death, the Slovak News Agency wrote to the National Institute of Medicines).

The institute has identified a causal relationship between vaccination and death as possible, indicating a moderate probability on a 5-point scale established by the World Health Organization (WHO) to characterize similar cases.

A SÚKL spokesperson stressed in its resolution on the case that the need for vaccination should be assessed individually for older people with multiple chronic diseases, who may also have health problems with mild side effects. To date, the Slovak Institute has recorded 353 cases of suspected adverse reactions to coronavirus vaccination, 24 of which have been classified as serious.

The vaccination program, which also started in Slovakia in late December, has so far vaccinated more than 102,000 people, nearly 6,000 of them on Monday. In Slovakia, only one type of coronavirus vaccine is currently used, the product of the Pfizer-BioNTech consortium.

According to data released by the National Health Information Center on Tuesday, nearly 11,000 PCR-type tests were carried out in Slovakia on Monday and 1,590 new infections were recorded. The number of new registered infections has been on a downward trend for a few days, but not the number of deaths. Health Minister Marek Krajcí said at a press conference on Friday that the epidemic situation in Slovakia is gradually improving, indicating that the country is already at the peak of the second wave of the coronavirus epidemic.

Since the spring onset of the disease in the country, the presence of the coronavirus has been detected by PCR in some 238,000 people, and to date more than 1,709,000 of this type of virus have been tested. The number of people declared cured is almost two hundred thousand and there are currently 3,263 infected in hospital treatment. Official sources attribute 4,260 deaths to the disease, a figure that rose to 192 on Monday.