There have been 860 new coronavirus infections and five fatalities in Slovenia in the last 24 hours, and the government has decided to include students in their final year of secondary education in priority groups for vaccination to make their preparations for school-leaving exams easier.

The vaccination of school leavers will be on a voluntary basis, as for the rest of the population, and they will get vaccinated together with their parents, Health Ministry official Vesna Kerstin Petrič told a news conference.

The vaccination will start by the end of next week.

High school leavers will be vaccinated with available vaccines, which means that as their first dose they will receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, she said.

Kerstin Petrič said that the government had also decided to put on priority vaccination lists the parents of children with chronic diseases.

The latest 860 infections were confirmed after 4,553 tests were done, which is a 20.2% share of positive cases.

The number of new infections is significantly lower than seven days ago, when it stood at 1,279, even though the incidence rate is still rather high and stands at 290, said government official Uroš Orbanija.

This shows that the recent 11-day lockdown has produced an excellent result, he said.

The situation in hospitals is still difficult, with 639 hospitalised patients, 15 more than on Thursday, and 152 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units, two more than on Thursday.

So far 360,450 Slovenians have received the first dose of the vaccine, while 136,582 have received both doses, which accounts for 6.5% of the population, the national public health institute has reported.