September the 5th, 2020 – At the very beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Croatia was among the European countries with the best epidemiological picture and the Croatian health system was performing excellently despite the extra burden. Richer European countries, such as Italy and the United Kingdom, had a dreadful picture and it seemed that Croatia would continue on a good path. Then the tourist season arrived and things went south.
Tourism makes up 20 percent of Croatia’s GDP and as such, sacrifices had to be made in order to rescue the enfeebled economy and allow visitors when many other countries were not letting anyone but citizens and permanent residents in. The quick rise in the infection rate in Croatia sadly saw many countries, including the UK and the Netherlands, followed by Austria, place Croatia back on their red lists and warn their citizens against travel.
It has been stated that the ”summer symptoms” of the new coronavirus are somewhat milder than they are likely to be in the autumn, and as the colder months quickly approach, worries for and from the Croatian health system grow. A new coronavirus hospital, set up at Dubrava Hospital, has already received seventeen patients, one of whom was a young man with an undisclosed chronic condition.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 4th of September, 2020, there were no patients in the covid department of the Dubrava Hospital on Sunday. As of Friday, there were already seventeen such patients, as Ivica Luksic, the coordinator of hospital treatment for people with coronavirus, told HRT yesterday morning.
”The trend isn’t good, today we have seventeen patients here, two are on a respirator, so since the beginning of this week we have come to seventeen patients.
We need to get serious because this trend of an increasing number of hospital patients and those on respirators is not good, we can’t enter the autumn like this because the Croatian health system will be overloaded,” explained a concerned Luksic.
“I’d like to tell everyone to remain responsible, the virus is here, it is among us, and life must go on, but by adhering to basic measures we can significantly improve this situation,” he said.
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