Ljubljana - Slovenia logged 4,069 coronavirus cases for Thursday, the third straight day that the tally more than doubled from the same day a week ago and the second time this week that the daily count topped 4,000.

The National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) estimates the total number of active cases in the country has risen to 28,607, which is 2,855 more than the day before.

The 7-day case average rose by 306 to 2,667 and the 14-day incidence per 100,000 people is up by 135 to 1,348.

Government data shows that nine patients with Covid-19 died yesterday, which brings the total death toll since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 to 6,107.

A total of 547 patients were hospitalised with Covid-19 this morning, three fewer than yesterday. The number of ICU patients decreased by six to 155.

Almost 37% of the over 11,000 PCR tests conducted yesterday came back positive.

According to Matjaž Leskovar from the Jožef Stefan Institute, the epidemic is progressing increasingly fast, most likely because of more socialising over the Christmas and New Year holidays and because of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

The number of new infections could peak in the last week of January when more than 10,000 tests a day could return positive.

Hospitalisation are meanwhile expected to culminate in the first week of February, when numbers from the peak of the fourth wave of the epidemic could be reached.

Leskovar estimates that the reproduction number in Slovenia is currently at around 1.6, meaning one infected person infects another 1.6 persons.