(ANSA-AFP) - LJUBLJANA, 13 NOV - Slovenia's government announced Thursday it would suspend public transportation and ban almost all public gatherings for two weeks as its existing shutdown measures have failed to sufficiently contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. Starting Friday and for at least two weeks, all gatherings, except those of family or household members, will be banned. Most of the exceptions which currently permit border crossings will also be suspended, Interior Minister Ales Hojs told a news conference after a government meeting, without giving further details. Public transportation will also be suspended from Saturday morning. The government has also ordered the closure of all shopping centres and non-essential stores from Monday. Schools and universities will continue online lessons for at least the next two weeks. The new measures come two weeks after the Slovenian authorities announced a partial lockdown banning gatherings of more than six and journeys between municipalities, as well as making the use of face masks mandatory in public. "The measures in force since 26 October have had partial success in bringing the number of new cases from exponential growth to linear growth," Health Minister Tomaz Gantar said. Gantar said the government hoped to build on this positive trend by stopping all social interaction over the next two weeks. However, the daily number of deaths among coronavirus patients continues to climb, reaching 41 on Thursday, the highest since the start of the pandemic. That brings to 686 the number of people in Slovenia who have died due to the coronavirus. The EU member state of two million people escaped the worst of the first wave of the pandemic, but has been badly hit by the second, now counting over 50,000 confirmed infections. (ANSA-AFP).