ZAGREB, February 24, 2020 – Croatia’s COVID-19 crisis management team will apply strict epidemiological measures to passengers coming from northern Italian regions where a rising number of patients have been diagnosed with this infectious disease in recent days.
The same controls will be in place for passengers arriving from Italy and China, the head of the team, Maja Grba Bujević, told reporters in Zagreb on Monday morning.
The health ministry’s crisis management team, which was set up to handle developments surrounding the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the world, is due to hold a news conference at 1pm Monday.
Grba Bujević said that the authorities had decided to take all the necessary measures to be prepared for the detection of possible first patients infected with this virus, after the north of Italy started fighting with Europe’s biggest outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
In the meantime, 42 students and four teachers from a secondary school in the northern Adriatic city of Pula, who returned from a trip to Venice on Sunday night, will be quarantined in their homes for the next 14 days.
The Croatian education ministry instructed primary and secondary schools to cancel any organised educational trips to Italy in the next 30 days.
Italy sealed off the worst-affected towns and banned public gatherings in much of the north, including halting the carnival in Venice, where there were two cases.
European Union health commissioner Stella Kyriakides was quoted by Reuters as saying that possible travel restrictions in the Schengen border-free area should be proportionate and coordinated among EU states, as the bloc faces a coronavirus outbreak in Italy.
“For the moment WHO has not advised imposing restrictions on either travel or trade,” Kyriakides told reporters on Monday, adding that a World Health Organization mission will travel to Italy on Tuesday to assess the situation.
More coronavirus news can be found in the Lifestyle section.
