STA, 6 July 2020 - Government spokesman Jelko Kacin said that a couple had breached quarantine rules, so they had been reported to police for suspected spreading of the coronavirus out of negligence. They face a fine or even prison, he said at Monday's coronavirus briefing.
A 37-year-old woman was notified her husband had Covid-19 on 20 June, but when calling the 122 emergency number on 3 July for stomach ache she did not inform healthcare staff about the infection. She only did so only after appearing at the UKC Ljubljana hospital's emergency department five hours later, thereby jeopardising other people's health.
Her 40-year-old husband, working for a larger Slovenian company, meanwhile kept going to work despite being sent into quarantine, said Kacin, adding that "a criminal complaint has been filed against both persons for spreading the new disease out of negligence". The couple are foreign citizens residing in Ljubljana.
Under the law on contagious disease, a violation of isolation or quarantine rules is fined with EUR 400-4,000, whereas the penal code carries a prison sentence from six months to up to eight years in case it results in death.
Kacin also presented the latest figures about quarantine orders issued on the border since Saturday. A total of 1,213 such decision were issued at the six border crossings designated for this purpose on the border with Croatia, Hungary and at Ljubljana airport.
Kacin did not say how many people were currently in quarantine, but Health Ministry data as of 29 June show that 7,190 quarantine orders were issued in June.
The spokesperson also said that based on the latest quarantine checks by health inspectors, "the majority of people do stick to quarantine restrictions".
Health inspectors visited over 60 persons in the areas of Maribor and Ljubljana on Sunday, finding quarantine breaches in only four cases.
Two persons were not at the address they had given to authorities, while another two seem to have provided a false address, explained Kacin.
The government's coronavirus task force will discuss the violations this evening while the government is expected to discus changes to its plans to manage the spread of the virus.
The priority is to prevent the spread of the virus to care homes and transmissions from abroad.
Kacin labelled the situation at homes for the elderly a reason for concern. This is after 16 residents and staff of a nursing home in Vipava tested positive for the virus.
"Homes for the elderly are an area at risk, for which we have to introduce a special system. We need to make sure that staff and all their residents are aware of that."
Sixteen new coronavirus cases confirmed, including Vipava care home outbreak
STASTA, 6 July 2020 - Slovenia recorded 16 new coronavirus cases after 530 tests on Sunday, including seven in an outbreak at the Vipava care home where nine elderly residents and seven staff are now infected, the latest data from the government and the care home show.
The number of patients hospitalised with Covid-19 has increased to 11 after four residents from the Vipava care home were moved to the Department of Infectious Disease at the UKC Ljubljana hospital.
None of the patients require intensive treatment.
The latest cases bring the country's total of coronavirus cases to 1,716. The death toll remains unchanged at 111.
Testing will continue today at the Vipava care home; 40 more residents and 12 staff are to be tested in the morning with the results due later today.
The home's director Martin Kopatin said the remaining 20 residents are to be tested late in the afternoon or tomorrow.
The facility accommodates 108 residents and 45 staff. The infection there was first confirmed on Friday with one of the residents. The origin of the transmission is still not known.
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