STA, 9 September 2020 - Slovenia recorded 79 new coronavirus cases from 2,560 tests carried out on Tuesday, an absolute daily record for the numbers of both new cases and daily tests since the first case was recorded in the country on 4 March, the latest government data shows. The number of infections among care home residents is again rising, hitting 15 on Tuesday.
The number of yesterday's tests was for instance by 979 higher than the number of those carried out a day earlier, when the daily tally of new cases reached 43.
Until yesterday, the day with the highest number of new cases detected was 26 March, when only 1,075 tests were carried out.
While the national tracker website covid-19.sledilnik.org shows 61 new cases for that day, a database at gov.si/teme/koronavirus-sars-cov-2/ shows 70 cases.
A total of 33 Covid-19 patients are currently in hospital, four in intensive care, and as many as 590 cases are active, shows the data on the national tracker site.
There were no new fatalities, so the national Covid-19 death toll remains unchanged since Friday at 135. A total of 3,312 infections have been confirmed so far.
Government Covid-19 spokesperson Jelko Kacin attributed the record number of new cases to a large number of tests and to full school and business reopening.
What is worrying is that the share of infected older people at care homes is increasing again, with 15 new cases confirmed on Tuesday, Kacin and Nuška Čakš Jager from the National Institute of Public Heath (NIJZ) told Wednesday's daily briefing.
Kacin said the growing number of infections among the elderly called for "additional measures", so Prime Minister Janez Janša had called a meeting of the government's Covid-19 task force for later in the day.
Ten infections have been confirmed since Monday at one of the two units of the Danica Vogrinec Home for the Elderly in the city of Maribor, the biggest elderly home in Slovenia with some 800 beds.
A similar situation has been reported by a care home in Črneče in the Koroška region, north, where five residents and one staff were tested on Tuesday to prove infected. None of the infected persons in either of the two homes showed any signs of the disease.
Čakš Jager, deputy head at NIJZ's Centre of Infectious Diseases, said the structure of infections was changing.
There are considerably more local transmissions, and many infections are of unknown origin, many more than one would have wanted, she said.
The number of those who fall ill with Covid-19 while in quarantine is also rising; as many as 11% of those who were ordered to quarantine fell ill, which Čakš Jager said showed the quarantine measure was warranted.
Apart from the 15 care home residents, three care home employees also tested positive on Tuesday, while the daily tally at schools was ten infected pupils and two teachers, according to Šakš Jager.
Yesterday's infections were confirmed in as many as 40 of Slovenia's 212 municipalities, with Maribor leading the way with 12, followed by Ljubljana with 10, the tracker website shows. Fewer than five infections were recorded in the other 38 municipalities.
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