The Health Ministry said the age limit for the Pfizer vaccine could change. EC greenlights the state assistance for tourism.

More measures to be lifted, but curfew remains

Slovakia has passed another threshold and now meets the criteria for switching to the light red tier of the Covid automat on the national level. The representatives of the Health Ministry have said that further measures will be lifted, but they want to reveal more details on Friday, May 7.

What is clear, though, is that the situation will improve in most districts. Only two will remain in the dark red tier starting next Monday, which under the current rules means that there might be a curfew from 5:00 and 1:00. Another 33 will be in the red tier and 44 in the light red tier. The districts in the light red tier can, for example, open all schools.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry reiterated that it expects 1.5 million vaccines to be delivered in May. Minister Vladimír Lengvarský (OĽaNO nominee) even said that the Pfizer vaccine could soon be administered to people aged 50+ (currently, only those older than 60 or younger than 18 can receive it).

More Covid and vaccination developments

Of 8,020 PCR tests carried out on May 4, 708 were positive (or 8.83 percent); of 90,229 antigen tests, 501 came back positive (or 0.56 percent). 31 more people died, increasing the total number to 11,886.
The Health Ministry will launch the first phase of the national mobilisation Covid-19 vaccination campaign in early May. It plans to target mostly older people.
The Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry has recommended Slovak citizens leave India as soon as possible and avoid travelling there due to the worsening pandemic situation.
It will no longer be necessary to buy antigen tests for emergency stock, the cabinet decided on May 5.

Permanent kurzarbeit passed

The state will give employers and employees a new permanent instrument to help them survive crises. Starting in 2022, it will cover a portion of employees’ salaries via the kurzarbeit or short-time work scheme when their employer is unable to assign them work within the originally agreed scope.

The change was approved by the parliament on May 4 and was supported by all 132 MPs present.

The tool will be activated when there is an obstacle at work on the side of the employer, in which the employer cannot assign work to at least a third of employees in the scope of at least 10 percent of the weekly working time. Financial assistance for employers, for each employee and each hour of obstacles at work, is to account for 60 percent of the average hourly earnings of the given employee.

Feature story for today

The biggest change related to the accounting and tax duties of entrepreneurs is the gradual increase in parameters for the obligation to verify individual financial statements by the statutory auditor through an amendment of the Accounting Act. The Economy Ministry estimates that this change in size conditions will mean that in 2022, the audit obligation will fall from the current 3 percent to less than 1 percent of accounting units.

While the increase in size parameters under which a company must have its financial statements audited has pleased the business sector, auditors warn that this change may reduce the quality of accounting in individual companies and lead to an increase in tax fraud. Read more in a story by Jana Liptáková.