STA, 12 February 2021 - The second wave of the pandemic in Slovenia has not had an impact on the country's export companies and its construction sector, IMAD, the government's macroeconomic think tank, said on Friday. It has, however, hit retail and some other services quite severely.

Revenue has dropped significantly since the second half of October, with the hospitality sector suffering the most, seeing its revenue drop by more than a half, IMAD said in the most recent issue of its regular publication.

The households' spending on personal services, entertainment, sports and other services has also decreased, owing to their inaccessibility.

The sales of motor vehicles and in retail dropped considerably, with the latter being dragged down above all by poor sales of clothing and footwear, furniture and household equipment.

But on the other hand, export-oriented companies and the construction sector have not been impacted significantly by the second wave.

Exports to EU countries, which account for about three fourths of Slovenia's total exports, as well as manufacturing, recovered to pre-crisis levels in the course of the final quarter of 2020, IMAD said.

The construction sector also saw a significant improvement, owing to an increase in the construction of residential buildings.

Moreover, confidence indicators suggest the continuation of advantageous trends in the beginning of this year. This is also supported by data on energy use and road traffic, both of which are only slightly lower than in January 2020.

STA, 11 February 2021 - Movement will once again be allowed throughout the country from Monday, after the government decided to abolish municipal and regional restrictions which have been in place for months. However, night curfew will stay in place between 9pm and 6am, Interior Minister Aleš Hojs told the press after the government session on Thursday.

Hojs, addressing reporters on Thursday as the government lifted a series of coronavirus restrictions, said it would be possible to cross the border with Austria, Hungary and Italy via all border crossings rather than designated checkpoints from Saturday.

Slovenia is also adding a new list of high risk countries to the red Covid country list to comprise countries in the EU and Schengen area whose epidemiological status is poorer than Slovenia's. Hojs listed as those currently including Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic.

Arrivals from those countries will have to produce a negative coronavirus test, however from Saturday it will also be possible to cross the border with a positive PCR test dating at least 21 days but no more than six months back, or with a doctor's note proving the person has recovered from Covid-19 that should be no older than six months.

Also valid will be negative tests issued by labs in third countries approved by the National Institute of Public Health, while only doctor's notes from EU and Schengen countries will be valid.

Those immunised against the virus who produce proof they have received a second jab will also be allowed to cross without restrictions.

Slovenia imposed systematic internal Schengen border checks first on 11 March on its border with Italy, which saw a rapid spread in coronavirus. Later checks were imposed on all internal borders.

Health checks on the external Schengen border with Croatia had been introduced in late February 2020.

With the easing of the first wave of coronavirus, Slovenia was one of the first countries to scrap mandatory quarantine for arrivals from EU and Schengen area countries on 14 May.

The border regime started to be restricted again in early autumn, depending on the coronavirus status of the country arrivals came from. Those from red-listed countries faced mandatory quarantine or a negative test. From late October to early December almost all of Europe was on Slovenia's red list.

STA, 11 February 2021 - The government has decided that all stores will be allowed to reopen in Slovenia on Monday, while consumers will no longer have to produce a negative coronavirus test, whereas now this is required for several services. However, skiing will be an exception to this, with skiers required to produce a negative test no older than 7 days.

All retail services will be allowed without restrictions from Monday, Economy Ministry state secretary Ajda Cuderman told the press after the government session in Thursday.

While consumers will no longer be required to show a negative test, those working in retail, beauty and massage services, as well as hairdressers, will still have to get tested regularly.

So will staff in manufacturing, maintenance and installation, real estate, training and animal grooming services, which are now reopening. Apart from car shops, services are limited to 400 square metres of surface area, said Cuderman. Staff training will be allowed for up to 10 people.

Retail and service staff required to get tested, will get priority treatment in testing, the government decided today. Moreover, testing will be paid for by the state.

The restriction of one customer per 30 square metres remains in place in closed spaces and one customer per 10 square metres in open air markets.

The government also decided to loosen restrictions currently in place for ski lift operators. From Monday, skiers will be able to buy fares with a negative test no older than 7 days, whereas until now the test had to be no older than 24 hours.

Ski lift staff in direct contact with clients will also need to have test no older than 7 days, Infrastructure Minister Jernej Vrtovec said.

Changes have also been made to the rules applying to taxi services and driving schools. Taxi drivers will have to be tested every three days, while driving school students will require a test no older than three days, whereas now it is limited to 24 hours. The rules remain unchanged for driving school instructors, who need a test no older than three days.

Moreover, the minister said changes are planned for public transport, as schools will once again reopen on Monday. "When schools open, public transport will run flawlessly."

Those who have recovered from Covid-19 will not have to get tested for six months and will be able to access services with a doctor's note. Negative tests will also not be required for those who have been vaccinated.

"This is important, considering that we have at least 200,000 people who recovered from Covid-19," said Vrtovec.

The Chamber of Craft and Small Business (OZS) welcomed the loosening of restrictions for services, above all the abolishment of tests for customers, noting that many beauty salons did not reopen while this requirement was in place.

However, the retail section of the OZS is less pleased and has sent a letter of protest to Prime Minister Janez Janša, objecting to regular testing imposed recently on staff in shops selling essentials, which have been open throughout the epidemic without the staff having to be tested.

Primary schools fully reopening on Monday

STA, 11 February 2021 - Primary schools throughout the country will fully reopen on Monday after almost four months of closure. Final year secondary school students will also return to school and exams will again take place at the university level along with seminars for up to 10 students, a government official said on Thursday.

Primary schools will reopen in the western half of the country for about 107,000 pupils, while 83,000 pupils from the eastern half of the country will start a one-week winter holiday, Education Ministry State Secretary Damir Orehovec told the press.

Some 6,000 teachers will thus also return to schools.

Strict safety measures will be adhered to at schools. Pupils will not be leaving their classrooms for different lessons to avoid contacts outside their class. Schools also are urged to organise school meals in a way to minimise contacts outside the bubbles.

No other activities will be organised at schools, and excursions and swimming and other additional lessons have been cancelled. However, individual music and art lessons will be allowed.

Some 11,000 high school students in the final year are also expected to return to their classrooms next week as are 655 students of vocational schools. Practical classes for secondary school students and adult education will be allowed again.

Exams will again take place at the university level along with seminars for up to 10 students. The same exceptions will apply for student dormitories.

Universities have already welcomed the changes. Ljubljana university chancellor Igor Papič sees this as an important step forward, which however is not essential, as the exam period ends this week and the summer semester begins next week. Still, the changes are welcome as universities will have to make up for the last three months, he told the STA.

Maribor university chancellor and the head of the Chancellors' Conference Zdravko Kačič said the possibility of assembly of up to ten people would enable them to organise courses to make up for any backlogs and conduct exams with up to 10 students.

There will be no changes for kindergartens and the first three grades of primary school, which are already open. According to Orehovec, kindergartens had 74% of the children there this week and the first three grades 90%.

As of Monday, non-contact sports will be allowed again for up to 10 people if the two-metre distance can be maintained at all times. Exercising will no longer be limited to families or individuals.

Schools and universities were first closed on 16 March last year when the Marjan Šarec government declared an epidemic. Pupils returned to school after two months of remote learning. On 18 May, the first three grades returned to school along with the final year secondary school students.

A week later the final year primary school pupils returned to their classroom, and than gradually all other grades. Secondary school students remained at home until the end of the school year.

The new school year started on 1 September as usually but schools were forced to switch to remote teaching soon. On 19 October, pupils from up to 6th grade could no longer go to school, and after the autumn break all other pupils staid home as well.

As the epidemiological situation in the country finally improved somewhat, the first three grades of primary school reopened in the regions faring the best on 26 January and also in other regions this Tuesday.

Slovenia scrapping Schengen checkpoints

STA, 11 February 2021 - Slovenia is scrapping checkpoints on internal Schengen borders starting from Saturday and those who have recovered from Covid-19 or have been vaccinated against it will be able to enter the country without having to quarantine or provide a negative coronavirus test, Interior Minister Aleš Hojs has announced.

Hojs, addressing reporters on Thursday as the government lifted a series of coronavirus restrictions, said it would be possible to cross the border with Austria, Hungary and Italy via all border crossings rather than just designated checkpoints from Saturday.

STA, 10 February 2021 - Slovenia currently has 2% of its population vaccinated against coronavirus and if the supply of vaccines continues at current pace, 5% of the population could be vaccinated by the end of the month, said Marta Grgič Vitek, the coordinator of the vaccination programme at the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ).

The vaccination of people older than 80 continues throughout the country today, including in Ljubljana and Ajdovščina. In some towns, like Kranj and Nova Gorica, new batches of the vaccine have not arrived yet and are expected on Thursday.

In Ljubljana, where vaccination is being carried out in the morning and rapid testing in the afternoon at the main fairgrounds, 4,000 shots by three different producers are available this week, Uroš Zafošnik, the local coordinator, said yesterday.

Until 7 February, almost 55,000 people received the first shot of vaccine, which is 2.6% of the population, and almost 43,000 the second, which is 2% of the citizens.

So far, a total of 108,000 vaccine doses have been distributed and another 136,100 doses are to be supplied this month.

Apart from the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the AstraZeneca vaccine is also being distributed today.

Currently, the recommendation is that mRNK vaccines, meaning the former two vaccines, are used for those older than 80, while others can also receive the AstraZeneca vaccine. The latter is recommended for inoculation of bedridden persons at their homes, as unlike the mRNK vaccines it is more stable and thus easier to transport.

When all those over 80 who have expressed interest in the vaccination will be inoculated, those over 75 years old will follow and then those over 70 and the particularly vulnerable patients with chronic diseases regardless of their age.

According to Grgič Vitek, the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca is recommended for people aged between 18 and 64, as there is not enough data on its efficiency in older people.

The second shot is to be administered after nine to 12 weeks, which is longer than with mRNK vaccines.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is to be used for health workers who have not been inoculated yet, for institutionalised persons who have not been vaccinated yet, for special schools staff and children, and for particularly vulnerable chronic patients under 65.

These will be followed by other chronic patients and then those working in key infrastructure.

Grgič Vitek could not say when healthy adults could expect to get vaccinated. "We don't know what the demand and supply will be," she said.

She expects those over 80 to be vaccinated by the end of the month, while vulnerable chronic patients could be inoculated in April.

The priority groups among employees in key infrastructure will be adjusted to the type and quantity of the vaccines supplied. "We believe teachers and employees in education should be a priority, while we will ask the government and other bodies to decide who else they consider to be the most important for the functioning of the country," said the NIJZ official.

Meanwhile, it is not clear yet whether the vaccines also prevent transmission of infection. "An expert recommendation is that once a person is inoculated, meaning a week after the second shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, two weeks after the second shot of the Moderna vaccine and three weeks after the first shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine, no testing is required for the next three months."

For now, this applies only to medical staff but the rules should also be set for others, Grgič Vitek said.

Until the end of this week, more than a thousand cases of side effects following vaccination have been entered into the NIJZ registry. Most, 1,064 cases referred to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine of which some 96,000 shots have been administered.

Five cases referred to the Moderna vaccine of which just over 8,000 shots have been distributed.

In most cases, mild side effects are being reported such as pain in the vaccination spot, headaches and dizziness.

Seven cases of serious side effects have been recorded since the end of January. "They were two deaths and five such side effects that required hospital treatment," Grgič Vitek said, adding the share of serious side effects was lower than with other vaccines.

Meanwhile, the head of the National Institute of Biology, Maja Ravnikar, presented the institute's research of the virus's presence in excrement. The institute has been testing samples from several sewage treatment plants across the country covering 600,000 people for months as part of a pilot project.

The results so far show that the amount of the new coronavirus in waste waters matches the number of active cases detected in tests. The last increase in the amount of virus was detected in January and now it has been decreasing for a while, Ravnikar told the press today.

"By analysing waste waters we are monitoring the entire population, meaning also those who have not been tested. This process is very fast, so sometimes we detect a rise in a number of infected people a few days ahead," she said.

The mutations of the virus can also be detected. Until mid-January the presence of South African or Brazilian strains have not been detected. Some samples have been association with the British variant but in very small quantities.

The latest data on coronavirus and Slovenia

STA, 9 February 2021 - Slovenia reported 357 coronavirus infections on Monday from a total of 11,253 tests in what continues to be a week-on-week decline. Slovenia has met both thresholds for entering the orange tier of restrictions, an improvement that may also be a result of scaled-down testing over the long weekend. 19 Covid patients died, show fresh official data.

Of the 1,493 PCR tests conducted yesterday 204 infections were confirmed for a positivity rate of 13.7%, down from 15% the day before. An additional 9,760 rapid antigen tests were performed with 153 returning positive for a positivity rate of 1.6%.

On Monday, Culture Day, the total of PRC and rapid tests was above the number of tests usually conducted on bank holidays due to mass testing among teachers and shop assistants, however the figure was still below weekday total.

A total of 945 patients with Covid-19 were treated in hospitals yesterday, one fewer than the day before, after 41 were discharged. 162 patients were in intensive care, two more than on Sunday.

The country has reached the orange tier of restrictions with both the number of hospitalisations and the 7-day daily average of new cases below 1,000.

The latter figure stood at 842 yesterday, the government announced on Twitter. The 14-day incidence per 100,000 residents was 683, show data by the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ).

The orange phase envisages reopening of schools 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.

Moreover, assembly of up to ten persons would be permitted and a ban on inter-municipal travel lifted.

The government will decide on the further course of restrictions on Wednesday when it is expected to review the epidemiological situation.

Health Ministry State Secretary Marija Magajne told today's press briefing that it would be sensible to soon introduce PCR confirmatory testing for positive test results produced by rapid tests, as the epidemic seems to be waning. Experts and ministry officials will soon meet to set down relevant protocols, she added.

Asked about a new call for applications for rapid tests, Magajne said it was in the works and would be published in a week. The procedure seems to be at a standstill though since she merely repeated the statement she made more than a week ago.

The supplies provided by the first call are dwindling in the meantime. Less than 20% of the tests supplied were still available last week. Magajne said there were no test shortages though as testing providers could also procure them themselves.

The state secretary said that before making a final decision on the second public call, the ministry was waiting for additional tests that are to be supplied as part of a joint EU order as well as for expert decisions on the testing strategy in the future.

Regarding the EU procurement procedure for rapid tests, she said the price was not yet made public and could not be disclosed hence, however she was able to say that 5% of the delivery would be free of charge for Slovenia.

So far 174,364 infections have been reported in Slovenia since the start of the epidemic, according to the NIJZ, which estimates 14,399 of them active. The death toll is currently at 3,654, showdata by the national tracker site covid-19.sledilnik.org.

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.

STA, 5 February 2021 - More than a month after Slovenia launched vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, prioritising the elderly, the number of hospitalisations has decreased. Elderly care homes report that those who were infected between jabs only suffered mild or no symptoms.

Slovenia started vaccinating the elderly in care homes first, as care homes recorded frequent outbreaks and suffered the most fatalities.

By today, nearly 9,500 elderly care home residents received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. A total of nearly 20,000 institutional care users have received at least one jab by now, the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities has told the STA.

Immunity develops in a specific period after the second dose, seven days after the second jab for the Pfizer/BionTech vaccine and a fortnight for the Moderna vaccine, which have been the two most widely used vaccines in Slovenia.

The country has also recently received the first batch of a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca, which is, however, recommended for a younger population. Elderly care home residents are on average older than 80.

Many homes reported high shares of residents getting infected between jabs. However, these infections were much less severe, with most patients showing only mild symptoms or none at all. Most importantly, none of those who were infected showed severe symptoms.

Apart from the elderly, nursing home and hospital staff are also being vaccinated in Slovenia at the moment. UKC Ljubljana, the country's biggest hospital, has reported that staff had gotten infected between doses, all suffering mild symptoms or none at all.

The latest data on COVID and Slovenia

STA, 5 February 2021 - One day into the implementation of a decree that sets the public health rules for border crossing, the government has changed the decree to make it simpler for daily cross-border commuters and students, after complaints that the system was unsustainable due to insufficient testing capacity.

The changed rules that entered into force today required that cross-border commuters and students must provide a negative test no older than seven days, a requirement similar to than put in place by Austria that takes effect next week.

Under the changes expected to enter into force on Saturday, the negative test will only have to be submitted for arrivals from countries whose 14-day number of cases per 100,000 population is higher than Slovenia's, government spokeswoman Maja Bratuša said Friday evening.

The same rules apply to EU and Schengen zone nationals who cross the border to help family, maintain contact with children, perform maintenance on property, and some other, smaller groups of exemptions.

The list of countries whose coronavirus statistics are worse than Slovenia's is very short at present and includes only Spain, Portugal and Czechia. The list will be updated on a weekly basis, Bratuša said.

The decision comes after cross-border commuters living along the borders with Austria and Italy started complaining about potentially insurmountable hurdles, a point also raised by centre-left opposition parties.

In the Nova Gorica area in western Slovenia people lined up for hours today to get a free rapid antigen test before free-testing sites close for three days.

Slovenia has a bank holiday on Monday and those working or going to school in Italy on Monday would not be able to get tested on time otherwise.

Simon Vendramin, a senior member of the civil protection force in the region, said the local community health centre was overstretched and would not be able to handle large groups of daily commuters on top of all walk-in tests and regular testing of teachers each start of the week.

The changed government decree is to be published in the Official Gazette this evening and take effect today, according to Bratuša.

STA, 5 February 2020 - Data by Johns Hopkins University from the US shows Slovenia has the highest percentage of population of any EU country that has already received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine. A table tracking vaccine efforts around the world shows that 0.90% of Slovenian population has been fully vaccinated.

Some 70,940 doses have been administered in Slovenia, with 18,726 receiving both jabs by now, the Johns Hopkins table shows.

Slovenia's covid tracker Sledilnik, which draws data from the national vaccination registry, shows that more than 54,200 people have received at least one dose of a vaccine by Thursday and over 36,000 the second shot.

Slovenia started vaccination, which is voluntary and free of charge, in late December, with the elderly, care home and hospital staff taking priority.

It is currently using three different vaccines produced by Pfizer/BionTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, all of which require two jabs.

Israel has the highest percentage of fully inoculated population (18.28%), with the rest lagging far behind. The UAE are in second place, followed by Iceland, the US, the Isle of Man and Slovenia in place six. The EU average is currently at 0.29%.

STA, 5 February 2021 - The national advisory committee on immunization has recommended restricting the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 to people aged 18 to 64, due to a lack of data on the vaccine's efficacy in older people.

However, the committee, which acts as an advisory body to the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ), has recommended giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to immobile persons at home, regardless of their age, according to a release posted on the NIJZ website.

This is because the vaccine, unlike messenger RNA vaccines (mRNA) such as Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, is more stable and can be transported ready for application to the vaccination point.

Since there are currently not sufficient data on the vaccine's efficacy in patients with chronic conditions, the advice is that those should rather be jabbed with mRNA vaccines.

The advisory committee recommends the AstraZeneca vaccine to be used as a priority in health workers who have not been inoculated yet, for education and childcare staff, institutionalised persons who have not jet received a jab, for staff and pupils in special needs schools, and for staff in other critical services.

A second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine should be applied nine to 12 weeks after the first jab.

Slovenia has thus joined a growing number of European countries who have limited the AstraZeneca vaccine to persons under the age of 65.

Apart from the fact that it can be stored at standard refrigerator temperatures and that it is cheaper, the vaccine is also less effective than mRNA vaccines.

The first batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine is due to arrive in Slovenia on Monday with inoculation due to start of Tuesday. It is expected to contain 9,600 doses, less than the initially expected 15,000.

A batch of 4,800 Moderna vaccine doses has arrived in Slovenia today, the NIJZ told the STA.

The latest data on COVID and Slovenia