Slovakia Party: Past Governments to Blame for Victims of Pandemic

Bratislava, October 21 (TASR) - The police investigative team tasked with looking into the state's management of the COVID-19 pandemic will have to acknowledge that it's past governments that bear responsibility for deaths during the pandemic as the Slovak health-care system wasn't ready for it following the governments of Robert Fico and Peter Pellegrini, the opposition Slovakia party said on Monday. "I'm curious to see what these investigators find. It was mainly politicians like Fico who were rallying people on the streets during the pandemic, advising people to take their face masks off and trying to get back into power at all costs. Pellegrini was shopping for suits at the time of a curfew. These are the politicians who are responsible for people's deaths," said Slovakia MP Roman Mikulec, who served as the interior minister during the pandemic. Earlier in the day, Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok (Voice-SD) announced that the Office for the Fight against Organised Crime (UBOK) is setting up an investigative team to look into the state's management of the pandemic. The team will focus on four areas: the allocation of public funds for the establishment of mobile facilities for collecting samples, purchases of medical supplies, the purchase of vaccines, and the reason why the death toll in the country reached 20,000 victims. zel