Public Health, Politics, and Public Health Policies During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Slovakia

Public health authorities in Slovakia have deployed heavily securitized responses toward members of Marginalized Roma Communities (MRCs), resulting in the militarized quarantines of their settlements during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Militarized quarantines limited or seriously violated the fundamental rights and freedoms of the members of these most vulnerable communities. (Surová 2025, Surová 2024, Surová 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d, Surová 2022, Surová 2021). The main objective of this study is to examine public health policies adopted by the public health authorities in Slovakia, which specifically targeted Marginalized Roma Communities (MRCs) during the recent global health crisis. The study applies a comparative empirical framework and qualitative content analysis (QCA) and explores the intersections of medicine, law, politics and public health policies. Public health policies issued in MRCs are analyzed from the perspective of the policy, science, and law triad to evaluate the reasoning patterns in decisions made by public health authorities. The main research questions look into how, why and based on which data public health authorities ordered anti-pandemic measures in the localities where members of Roma communities live. How and why, they tried to control the most vulnerable and marginalized minority in the country by the police and military, and what effects these measures have had on public health and the fundamental rights and freedoms of affected people. The study concludes that decisions of the public health authorities which targeted MRCs were underpinned by stereotypes and racism and produced discriminatory policies towards the most vulnerable groups in Slovakia and violated their fundamental rights and freedoms in an unprecedented manner and all in the name of the protection of public health.