A year since first coronavirus case was confirmed in Slovenia

Ljubljana – It is one year to the day since the first infection with the novel coronavirus was confirmed in Slovenia. More than 192,000 have been confirmed since, and almost 3,900 persons have died of Covid-19. Slovenia has been in the state of epidemic for 60% of the time, with many restrictions remaining in force.

One year ago, Slovenia was among the rare countries that had not confirmed a novel coronavirus case yet. The first was confirmed on 4 March 2020 as the virus was brought to the country with a group of travellers from Morocco.

New cases followed soon, including the one brought and spread in the Metlika care home by a doctor who arrived from Italy. It was there where the first Covid-19 patient died in Slovenia, on 14 March.

Eight days after the first case was detected, an epidemic was declared due to an increasing number of cases, and since then Slovenia has been in the state of epidemic 60% of the time.

The first wave of the epidemic was managed relatively good, as fewer that 110 Covid-19 patients died. It was estimated that one in a hundred residents in Slovenia got infected in the first wave, meaning around 20,000 people.

The second wave in the autumn and winter has been much stronger, and it is estimated that around a third of the entire population became infected, four times the number of officially confirmed cases (192,266).

According to the data from the National Institute of Public Health, almost 11,000 cases are still active.

A total of 3,874 Covid-19 patients died by Monday. Although the large majority of them were older persons, there were deaths among persons younger than 40, including of a pregnant woman.

The death rate has been declining in recent weeks as vaccination has been ramped up. By the start of this week over 125,000 people or 6% of the population had received the first dose and over 51,000 or 2.5% of the population received both jabs.

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