Slovenia has recorded only the British strain of coronavirus in its territory so far while there have not been any cases of any other variant, the Slovenian government told a press conference on Wednesday.

That the epidemic is slowing down is evidenced by data related to monitoring the presence of the virus in waste water, which confirm that the number of infections was rising in January while in February it has been falling, said Maja Ravnikar from the National Institute of Biology.

Monitoring has been conducted since March 2020 and is continuing. An analysis of 877 samples of waste water indicates that the British strain of coronavirus has been minimally present in Slovenia, at about one percent, while the South African strain and an alleged “Slovenian” strain have not been detected, said Ravnikar.

Viral genome sequencing has shown that of about twenty suspect cases, only four turned out to be the British strain, which is more contagious than the basic variant.

In the past 24 hours Slovenia conducted a record of almost 45,000 tests, mostly antigen tests, and confirmed 1,439 new coronavirus cases. Thirteen people have died as a consequence of the infection.

The government believes that it is still not safe to additionally relax current restrictions but will say more about that after meeting with epidemiologists later in the day.

According to epidemiologist Nuska Caks-Jager from the national public health institute, the current trends are positive and the number of new cases has decreased by 10.9% in the past two weeks.

There are hardly any cases in aged care facilities and the number of active cases in the country is constantly declining and currently stands at 14,008.

There are currently 840 COVID-19 patients in hospitals, including 160 in intensive care.