Slovenia’s conservative Prime Minister Janez Jansa said Wednesday he had tested positive for Covid-19, just as the EU country of two million sees a decline in new infections.
“For two years we have been successfully avoiding the coronavirus. Yesterday, during a self-test both of my children were positive, I was negative. Today, unfortunately, mine is also + (positive),” Jansa wrote on his Twitter account, posting a photo of his antigen self-test.
Jansa said his symptoms were mild for now and did not specify whether he would undergo a PCR test, which the government no longer requires to confirm an infection under recently changed rules.
Jansa took over the government in March 2020 just days after the epidemic in Slovenia was declared.
He has been accused by the centre-left opposition of inadequately handling the health measures and vaccination campaign, causing a relatively high mortality rate compared to other European countries with more than 6,000 deaths to date.
Slovenia has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the European Union with 57 percent of the population fully vaccinated.
Over the last week, health authorities have said that the fifth wave of the coronavirus is abating — the number of new cases dropped to some 5,000 on Wednesday compared to more than 20,000 a week ago.
