In the past 24 hours more than 8,500 new COVID cases were detected in Slovenia, which is a new record in daily infections since the outbreak of the epidemic, and the government has once again changed quarantine rules in an effort to curb the spread of contagion.

The new rules enter into force on Wednesday, and they apply to the health, education and social welfare sectors. School classes will have to go into quarantine only if infection is proven in 30% of students over a period of 14 days, while risky contacts will have to test daily over a seven-day period.

Employees in the medical, social welfare and education sectors will not have to go into quarantine if identified as risky contacts but they will have to test for seven consecutive days instead. They have also been advised to use the more effective, FFPs face masks.

“Not one solution is ideal and this is a compromise and we hope that this solution will work,” the head of the COVID response team, Mateja Logar, told the media.

According to the still unofficial data in the media, 8,588 new COVID cases were detected in Slovenia in the past 24 hours whereas 7 days ago there were 5,174 new cases.

Last week Slovenia logged almost 45,000 new cases of contagion compared with about 19,000 the week before that.

Daily numbers could be more than 10,000 in the days to come, media in Slovenia reported on Tuesday.