Slovenia currently has some 40 confirmed cases of the delta variant of coronavirus, Slovenia's Prime Minister Janez Jansa told parliament on Monday, adding that a fourth wave is imminent if at least the percentage of vaccinated population does not reach 70% by the end of summer.

He added that some European countries are even considering making vaccination compulsory.

If we don’t get to 70%, then we will have a fourth wave and everything will be locked down in the autumn, Jansa said in parliament.

Rejecting criticism from the opposition of how his cabinet had tackled the health crisis so far, Jansa said that a third of the population or 40% of the adult population had fully been inoculated to date, which placed Slovenia in the middle of ladder of European countries. However, inoculation in the country and Europe needs to be ramped up so that the autumn could be as normal as possible, the PM admitted.

“If a new, serious wave hits Europe during the autumn because of the delta variant, then we will be responsible for that. We will then need to ask ourselves how it can be possible that we managed to develop a vaccine against Covid-19 so quickly yet we can’t convince people to get vaccinated,” said Janša.

He added that all of Europe has a problem with accelerating the inoculation campaign which imposed the question about these discrepancies between the development of the European science and not a high level of  Covid-19 vaccination awareness.

The Slovenian PM  added that some EU countries were already preparing legislation for compulsory inoculation against COVID-19 for some categories of the population. Some countries are considering compulsory inoculation for all adults, and some are considering compulsory inoculation for medical staff, personnel in aged-care homes, people working in deliveries, tourism and the like and to abolish free testing for those who refuse to be vaccinated, he added.