Kotlar to Oppose Public Health Bill, Will Submit Own Bill

Bratislava, 9 June (TASR) - Government Proxy for the Investigation into COVID-19 Pandemic Management Peter Kotlar will not support the government-sponsored amendment to the Act on the Protection, Support and Development of Public Health during its second reading in Parliament because he believes that the bill contains insufficient and ambiguous definitions of an epidemic and a pandemic. Instead, Kotlar plans to submit his own parliamentary proposal in September. Kotlar told TASR that he had submitted an amendment to the bill aimed at introducing "objective and measurable" criteria for declaring epidemic and pandemic situations. He proposed defining an epidemic on the basis of the seven-day incidence of clinically ill persons per 100,000 inhabitants, with the reference epidemic threshold set at a level long used for seasonal influenza. He also suggested taking disease mortality into account to ensure that measures adopted are proportionate to the severity of the illness. According to Kotlar, the proposal also included a new definition of a pandemic. In addition to the global spread of a disease, it would require demonstrably increased morbidity and mortality, serious health complications, pressure on the healthcare system, and significant social or economic impacts. The proxy further proposed introducing a new legal term, "state of threat from the introduction of a pandemic pathogen into the territory of Slovakia". He said this would allow preventive measures to be taken before an infection spreads within the country. Kotlar argued that decision-making by state authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic was often based on indicators that did not adequately reflect the actual scale and severity of the disease. The absence of precise legal definitions, he said, created room for extraordinary measures to be adopted without clearly established objective criteria. "Legislation must be based on exact, transparent and scientifically verifiable parameters. Only in this way can we ensure that future measures are proportionate to the real epidemiological situation and that mistakes, the consequences of which affected the whole of society, are not repeated," Kotlar said. mf