In the past 24 hours 464 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Slovenia, out of 2,063 tests, and 24 people have died of COVID-19, the government said on Monday, estimating that the pandemic is calming down.

“It is very encouraging that the reproduction number for the virus has dropped to… 0.95%,” the government's COVID-19 spokesman, Jelko Kacin, told the press in Ljubljana.

He said the second wave of the epidemic was calming down and that the measures adopted by the government had worked. They will remain in place for a while and one should be cautious as hospitalisation numbers will continue to grow for a while, he added.

Since the start of the epidemic, Slovenia has confirmed 45,625 cases of infection and almost 600 deaths. Slovenian media say the number of COVID-19 deaths per capita is among the highest in Europe.

Currently there are 21,514 active cases, including 1,143 patients in hospitals, 18 more than on Sunday, including 181 in intensive care, one more than on Sunday.

Health Minister Tomas Gantar has said Slovenia is still not in the safe zone as the hospitalisation numbers and deaths keep rising, although the number of positive tests has been dropping in the past few days.

“We are not out of the woods yet and will have to continue acting in the days and weeks ahead, probably months. The current situation doesn't indicate that we could talk about relaxing measures,” said Gantar.