STA, 20 May 2020 - Slovenia's coronavirus case count has increased to 1,468 after one new infection was confirmed on Tuesday out of 981 tests. No new fatalities have been reported, leaving the death toll at 104.
Only 23 patients were still in hospital with Covid-19 yesterday, after one was discharged. Only four remained in intensive care, according to the latest government data.
Since the start of the epidemic, 276 Covid-19 patients have been discharged from hospital.
Assessments from the national Covid-19 tracker, available at https://covid-19.sledilnik.org, show that the number of active coronavirus cases had dropped to 24 by Tuesday.
The tracker's estimates show the number of active cases peaked at 609 on 3 April and has been dropping since.
It dropped below a hundred, to 95 on 5 May and, and below 50 on 12 May, when it stood at 45.
The estimate is made by counting confirmed cases older than 14 days as recovered, while also allowing for fatalities, which the tracker said was a methodology used in line with the recommendations of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
An additional safeguard included is that the number of recuperated patients is limited by the number of hospitalised patients to prevent the number of active cases falling below those hospitalised.
Meanwhile, the National Institute of Public Health, which started publishing the number of active cases only a few days ago, estimated the number of active cases as of Tuesday at 20.
The number of new daily coronavirus cases has been below two for a week now.
A total of 71,951 tests for Sars-CoV-2 have been carried out so far.
Testing has been available widely free of charge to anyone showing symptoms, only they needed to get a referral through their GP. Such testing continues to be available.
However, with the reopening of borders there has been huge interest in self-pay coronavirus testing, and with sufficient number of test kits now available, the Health Ministry has given the go-ahead for such testing as well.
Self-pay PCR method testing is available from today at the Maribor Health Community Centre, and from tomorrow at the UKC Ljubljana Department of Infectious Diseases and the Ljubljana Health Centre.
It has been or will be made available shortly also in other hospitals around the country.
To get tested, it is necessary to register online or by phone. Test results will be available within 24 hours. The test and the corresponding certificate will be available at the price of EUR 93.
Drive-through testing will be available at the Ljubljana health Community Centre's unit in Metelkova Street at the cost of EUR 100.
Tatjana Lejko Zupanc, the head of the UKC Ljubljana Department of Infectious Diseases, said that for now only self-pay swab tests for active presence of the virus were available, but not yet antibody tests.
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