Ljubljana - Occupational medicine expert Metoda Dodič Fikfak addressed the government's press conference Wednesday morning, saying that regular and consistent wearing of masks while at work and sanitising of hands and work spaces had proven to be difficult in Slovenia. She thus called for more work from home.

"Looking at the statistics, it is perfectly clear that we either do not know, wish or won't behave in a way that this fight against an invisible enemy would require," she said.

She could not provide detailed data on how many people worked from home at the moment, but had heard that about 30% of employees worked from home in the second wave, while the figure was at 70% during the first wave.

Dodič Fikfak said she knew of many employers that would not allow their employees work from home and expressed belief the reason for this was mistrust in the workers. She cannot imagine any other reason for this, as enough time had passed since the first wave to determine what can be done from home before the second wave broke out.

"Therefore, I call on employers to allow, when possible, work from home and introduce measures to oversee it. They must know that asymptomatic infected persons can work from home."

An analysis by the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) has shown that in the past week, 58 CEOs, 145 sales clerks, 68 doctors, a total of 702 healthcare staff, 50 cooks, 100 cleaning persons and 44 police officers had been infected.

"It is understandable that healthcare is seeing more infections than other fields, also due to fatigue, but high figures are incomprehensible in many other professions," Dodič Fikfak said.

She expressed concern about a high number of infections among top-level managers, who apparently seem to fail not only to protect themselves but also their employees in order to keep production lines running.