The President of Slovakia, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, and members of his new right-leaning, anti-graft coalition government donned protective masks and gloves for their swearing-in.

Slovakia, which split from the neighbouring Czech Republic, or Czechia, in the 1990s, elected President Zuzana Čaputová, of the left-liberal Progressive Slovakia party, in June 2019.

Prime Minister Igor Matovič, of the right-populist Ordinary People (OLaNO) party, meanwhile, entered office only this month, after successful talks to form a four-party coalition government, with the Chinese coronavirus pandemic an urgent priority.

Both the President and the Prime Minister have attempted to set a strong example to the country of 5.6 million people, pointedly donning protective face masks and gloves for the new government’s swearing-in and early press conferences.

There has been some dispute over the utility — or lack thereof — of face masks in fighting the coronavirus, with some suggesting that only high-end N95 respirators with clean filters are of use, with simpler surgical masks only being effective for health workers in a clinical setting, for a limited number of uses.

Others, however, have pointed to studies showing that even simple surgical masks achieve “a 3.4 fold (95 per cent CI 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral aerosol shedding”, and that an “80 per cent compliance rate” in wearing masks “essentially eliminated… influenza outbreak[s]”.

Some have suggested that ubiquitous mass use in countries Japan, for example, explains the relative lack of Chinese coronavirus in that country, despite relatively crowded urban environments and an older population — although this hypothesis has not yet been proven epidemiologically.

Why the high rate of #COVID19 infection in Italy, but not in Japan (similar aging populations and family living structures)? It might come down to % of people wearing masks.https://t.co/WbmC9CqIbZ pic.twitter.com/n5BAsVTe9p — Jeffrey Kleintop (@JeffreyKleintop) March 23, 2020

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