By: P.T., STA
Slovenia recorded 2,139 new coronavirus cases for Tuesday, 12% fewer than a week ago on what is typically the day of the week with the highest number of cases, as test positivity remained above 30%. A further 38 Covid-19 patients died, taking the death toll to 1,900.
Presenting fresh data at the daily press briefing, the government Covid-19 spokesman Jelko Kacin said that a total of 7,003 tests were performed on Tuesday.
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While increasing on the previous day, the test positivity rate dropped by 3.3 percentage points from the rate a week ago to 30.5% and the daily infections decreased by 290, said Kacin.
The number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals dropped by 22 to 1,282 as 104 were discharged home and 106 were newly admitted. The number of those treated in intensive care units rose by five to 198.
The highest rolling 14-day average of infections per 100,000 residents was recorded in east central region of Posavje, at 1,447, and the lowest in Central Slovenia, at 722.
According to the tracker site covid-19.sledilnik.org, Slovenia has so far confirmed 90,075 coronavirus cases, of which 20,738 are active infections. The seven-day rolling average per 100,000 is 1,496.3, down 2.8% on the day before.
Eva Grilc, an epidemiologist with the National Institute of Public Health, reported that epidemiologists, helped by medical students, managed to contact all or at least two-thirds of the newly infected daily.
Over 25% of them cite place of work as the likeliest source of infection, and over 22% family or household members, while over 27% say they cannot say where they caught the virus.
After the government opened a special website yesterday where the population can register their intention to get vaccinated against Covid-19 when the vaccine becomes available in the country, 16,930 registered in less than 24 hours, Kacin said.
After Tuesday’s virtual meeting of Slovenian hospital managers, joined by the health minister, UKC Ljubljana director general Janez Poklukar reported their observation that hospitalised Covid-19 patients were increasingly old with an increased number having five more underlying conditions.
“Hence, a growing number of Covid-19 patients require longer hospitalisation or even cannot be discharged to their current place of residence, so a proposal was formed to increase the number of nursing bed capacities for Covid and post-Covid patients,” said Poklukar in a release today.
Hospital directors also noted that 10% to 20% of post-Covid patients were being admitted to hospital due to complications incurred during the course of recovery from the disease with internist emergency wards facing the most pressure in that respect.
