Slovenia's epidemiological situation is deteriorating with the British variant of coronavirus becoming predominant among new cases, local authorities said on Tuesday when 981 new confirmed cases and nine related deaths were reported.

In the past 24 hours, 5,022 tests were conducted confirming 981 new cases with the share of positive cases being 19.5%. At the same time 47,000 fast antigen tests were conducted and their results are confirmed subsequently by the more reliable PCR test.

Since last week the number of COVID hospitalised patients has once again increased after it was slowly declining over the past month when their number were almost halved, said Robert Carotta, the coordinator for hospital capacities in COVID wards.

On Monday, 72 COVID patients were admitted to hospital, while 50 were discharged and currently the hospitalisation number is 507.

Currently there are 10,874 active cases and the weekly average is 834.

Nine more people died as a consequence of the contagion bringing the death toll to 3,985.