In the past 24 hours 707 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Slovenia, almost twice as many as last Monday, as well as 11 COVID-19 deaths, while 34% of the tests have come back positive, the highest percentage since the start of the epidemic.

Given that public transport is considered highly conducive to the spread of infection, the government said on Monday that inspectors have begun to step up the control of COVID certificates and penalise those without them.

The director of the National Public Health Institute, Milan Krek, said recently that there was a lot of virus among university students and that one of the next measures could be a return to online classes.

Epidemiologists warn of increasing pressure on hospitals, where 493 COVID patients are being treated, including 127 in intensive care. According to a government strategy from last month, COVID restrictions could be stepped up once the number of patients in intensive care exceeded 150.

In that case, only people who have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID would be allowed to come to work and the same would apply to most other activities, including transport and shopping centres.

The government is continually calling on people to get vaccinated as the safest protection. Only 53% of the population has been fully immunised.