In the past 24 hours Slovenia has registered 718 new coronavirus cases and the number of new cases is continuing to fall however a new cluster has emerged in an aged-care facilities with more than 30 residents being infected.

Of the 3,537 PCR tests taken, 718 proved positive which is a rate of 20.3%. That is a much better situation than a week ago when there were 1,049 new infections and a rate of 22.9% of positive tests, government representatives told a press conference. They warned that the situation in hospitals is not calming down and 71 new COVID patients were admitted on Monday, bringing the number of hospitalised cases to 649.

The fourteen-day incidence rate is still relatively high at 584.

In the past 24 hours, eight people died as a consequence of COVID, five of whom were hospitalised patients and the death toll has now climbed to 4,167.

The number of active cases is stable currently at 12,331, while the seven-day average increase in one day has fallen from 785 to 737, the government's official data indicates.

So far 17.8% of the population has received at least one dose of two-dose vaccines and the government expects that more than half the adult population will have been inoculated by the start of summer.

Most of the fatal cases are among the elderly population and these mostly being in aged-care facilities where the situation is much better than it was at the peak of the second wave of the epidemic late last year when the daily incidence rate was more than 160 residents and 130 staff in aged-care facilities, state-secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare,  Cveto Ursic explained.

Thanks to inoculation and good organisation, at the start of this month the average number of new cases in aged-care facilities has come down to less than 30 new cases among a population of almost 19,000 beneficiaries and 12,000 staff, he underlined.

One of the rare hotspots has been identified in an aged-care facility in Trbovlje where more than 30 residents have caught the virus including some who have been inoculated. However, all of them have developed mild symptoms and do not need hospital treatment, the local health authorities said.