Over the past 24 hours, 136 new cases of coronavirus infection have been confirmed in Slovenia after 2,616 tests conducted, and there has been one more death, the Slovenian government said on Wednesday.

This is second highest number of daily infections after 137 cases were recorded last Thursday.

According to the Health Ministry’s data, since the start of the epidemic in Slovenia there have been 4,694 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, and there are currently 1,383 active cases.

Sixty-five Covid-19 patients are being treated in hospitals, including ten in intensive care units. To date, there have been 143 coronavirus-related deaths.

Bojana Beovic from the government’s Covid-19 expert team told the media that this was the second wave of coronavirus, which had reached Slovenia sooner than expected, because it had been thought that it would occur in November or December. According to her, these are cases of local transmission as a consequence of people socialising in closed spaces more often than in the summer.

Epidemiologists expect that the second wave could subside in about ten days when the new restrictive measures, introduced by the government last week, start showing results.

Beovic underscored the importance of wearing masks everywhere where they were mandatory.