STA, 9 February 2021 - Additional stores are expected to reopen on Tuesday following the government's recent decision to allow in-person shopping in all stores under 400 square metres. Although the decree took effect on Saturday, most stores have postponed the reopening until today since they had trouble providing the required testing for their staff.
Only between 10% and 15% of stores that could reopen on Saturday were actually able to do that, according to the Chamber of Commerce (TZS).
The government gave the green light for an extensive reopening on Friday, permitting stores and repair shops under 400 square metres to again welcome their customers in person.
The establishments were allowed to reopen on Saturday under the condition of producing negative tests of their staff. Many could not provide testing earlier though and are expected to reopen today following mass testing among staff over the past long weekend, TZS president Mariča Lah told the STA.
After experiencing issues with the organisation of the testing, businesses were helped out by the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ).
The institute told the TZS that retailers could organise the testing drives at community health centres or private testing providers that are either concession holders or not, also providing a list of available private facilities.
Business representatives were told last week by Prime Minister Janez Janša and Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek that the cost of staff testing will be covered by the state.
For some services, most notably beauticians, real estate agencies, tutoring and pet salons, both staff and customers must produce a negative test to conduct business.
Mass testing is expected to continue in coming days as staff testing will be obligatory from 12 February for shops and services that had been already open, such as grocery shops and food markets.
All pupils through third form to return to school
STA, 9 February 2021 - Pupils in the first three grades of primary school throughout the country will return to in-classroom instruction on Tuesday in line with last week's government decree. All kindergartens are to reopen.
On Thursday, the government decided to suspend a region-based approach to imposing or lifting coronavirus restrictions, deeming the entire country to be in tier red.
The second strictest phase envisages pupils through the third form returning to school. Moreover, kindergartens that have been closed so far are allowed to reopen today and those that have been providing day care only to parents in essential professions may now go back to full capacity.
Both parents and teachers have welcomed the move, expressing hope that the remaining students may soon follow suit.
Weekly mass testing among teachers teaching in person is still obligatory, with all of them required to have their swab taken at the start of the school week except for those who have already recovered from Covid-19.
A number of schools organised testing already yesterday, whereas the majority will test their staff today.
Rapid testing of teachers in Ajdovščina (W) has detected a high positivity rate (above 15%) among teachers of a local primary school, however subsequent PCR tests came back negative, deeming all the rapid test results fake positives.
The PCR confirmatory testing was used in the Ajdovščina municipality yesterday to confirm or dismiss 20 positive results produced by rapid tests and all of them turned out to be fake positive. Egon Stopar, the director of the Ajdovščina health centre, thinks that the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) should re-assess the quality of the rapid tests.
Slovenia could soon reach tier orange, which envisages in-classroom instruction for the remaining primary school pupils and final years of secondary school as well as resumption of exams and seminars at the university level with up to ten people allowed.
A part of secondary school students intends to boycott remote classes today out of protest against remote schooling. Parents of primary school pupils from the Maribor area have urged a 10-minute suspension of today's classes to voice support for the secondary school students.
