December 15 (SeeNews) - Slovenia registered its first cases of the novel Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19, the country's government said.
Four samples of the Omicron variant were detected in the last screening tests carried out at Slovenia's Institute of Microbiology and Immunology, the head of the institute, Miroslav Petrovec, said on Tuesday, as quoted in a statement by the government.
"The persons infected come from the Ljubljana area and were tested in the period from November 29 to December 6. The epidemiological data are still being investigated. One of the infected persons contracted COVID-19 last year," Petrovec said.
The Omicron variant infection may cause another COVID-19 wave, health minister Janez Poklukar said in the statement. The decline in the daily number of new cases in recent days is also slowing down, he added.
"In the light of the rapid transmissibility of the Omicron variant, between 15,000 and 20,000 hospital admissions can be expected. The virus will continue to burden hospitals until summer, which will be difficult for the health sector to sustain," Poklukar added.
According to data from the World Health Organisation, the number of COVID-19 cases confirmed since the outbreak of the pandemic in Slovenia, a country with a population of 2.1 million, totalled 440,633 as of Wednesday. The number of coronavirus-related deaths was 5,810. As of December 4, 2021, a total of 2,569,296 vaccine doses have been administered in the country.