STA, 27 January 2020 - The coordination group for monitoring and managing contagious diseases discussing the coronavirus outbreak announced in Ljubljana on Monday that Slovenia was braced for a potential outbreak. It is monitoring the situation carefully and cooperating with all WHO member states in efforts to prevent the spreading of the virus.
Mojca Gobec from the Health Ministry asserted that the country was prepared for a potential outbreak. "It is very important that we are ready because we can expect imported cases," said Gobec, the head of the public health directorate at the ministry.
It is essential that the system contains the infection and reduces the risk of the spreading of the virus to a minimum, she pointed out a press conference after today's meeting.
Medical staff has been acquainted with the procedure to prevent further contamination in case the virus occurs in Slovenia, said the head of the Ljubljana clinic for infectious disease, Tatjana Lejko Zupanc.
Maja Sočan from the National Institute of Public Health urged against travelling to China, noting that the country had run out of protective masks and that transport had been hindered because of the virus.
She noted that measures introduced at airports to prevent the spreading of the virus from China such as the measurement of body temperature were not efficient, because the disease can be spread before the symptoms occur.
"Thermal cameras seem to be a very agreeable measure at first glance, but we must be aware that most passengers arrive by land," she said.
Lejko Zupanc said that such infections were nothing new, noting that primarily at risk were the people with chronic diseases and those who are fragile.
The pneumonia-like illnesses from the newly identified coronavirus, which appeared in December in Wuhan, central China, has so far claimed at least 80 lives. More than 2,700 people have been infected.
Cases of infections have been recorded in several other countries as well, including the US and France.
