Slovenia launches nationwide vaccination campaign to fight Omicron

Ljubljana, Jan 14 (IANS) Slovenia has launched a massive three-day vaccination campaign to curb the fast spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant.

The three-day vaccination campaign was launched by Slovenia on Thursday. Until Saturday, vaccination centres across the country will be open at least 12 hours a day with no appointment needed, Xinhua news agency reported.

“We are expecting a bigger number of patients (than usually) to come in, so we are prepared with bigger teams to vaccinate, and we are ready to vaccinate anyone who comes,” Haris Mustajbasic, a vaccination coordinator in a health centre in Ljubljana, told Xinhua.

Although Slovenia started its vaccination campaign more than a year ago, so far only 57 per cent of the country’s 2.1 million population have been fully vaccinated.

Health Minister Janez Poklukar visited several vaccination centres on Thursday and told the media: “I am glad there is a lot of interest. This will help us master the pandemic together and return to the life that we knew before the outbreak.”

“We have 153 patients in intensive care units on Thursday,” he said.

“Ninety per cent of them have not been vaccinated. So, I again invite the public to take part in the vaccination days that we have organised.”

Slovenia has been fighting Covid-19 since March 2020. To date, it has logged 512,793 confirmed Covid-19 cases and has lost over 6,000 people to the coronavirus, the National Institute of Public Health said.

–IANS

int/khz/