As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 31st of October, 2020, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic has stated that we’re now entering the most difficult phase of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, but added that the growth in the number of infected people in Croatia is slower than it is over in Western Europe. He still believes that we can avoid further tightening of measures, including a damaging lockdown. The director of HZJZ, Krunoslav Capak, was a guest on RTL Danas (Today) recently. Asked what other measures could be introduced in the fight against coronavirus, he said that they presented the measures that came into force on Tuesday.
“We’re just getting started with the measures. We’re not going to introduce any new ones for a few days now because we need to see the results of these ones first,” he replied, adding that HZJZ still has ”a whole range of measures” in their arsenal.
”The additional limitation of the number of people who are permitted to gather together, the additional limitation of working hours, the additional limitation of the number of people who can participate in sporting competitions, training and so on. So… a whole host of other measures exist. I’m not announcing them and it doesn’t mean that they’ll come into force,” the HZJZ director said.
Lockdown?
Capak said that the reason for the state of the financial and economic situation in the country is “absolutely not” the only reason why the National Civil Protection Headquarters isn’t yet going for a new lockdown. “It’s just one of the elements. Epidemiologists need to ban things and close things down because it reduces contact, and it’s the most effective way to combat contracting this new infection,” he said, adding that there are a number of ”social, psychological, financial and all other aspects” that the government must address and take care of.
”The government that must take care of that. That isn’t our job as epidemiologists, it’s the job of those who make the decisions, it’s them who must take care of it,” he said, adding that Croatia doesn’t have as much growth as other, neighbouring countries and European Union countries.
“We’ve got the Scandinavians who are traditionally good, but most of these Central and Western European countries have seen huge growth. Our growth isn’t so massive and we think our measures are good and balanced, and that these measures that we’ve adopted are good and that they’re going to have an effect,” the HZJZ director said.
When asked if he expects Croatia to go reach more than 3,000 newly infected people a day, he said that he thinks it’s realistic “that the number will reach 3,000 in the next few days”. “But after that, at least in my opinion, it won’t really grow more,” he noted.
”During the summer, we had 30 to 35 percent asymptomatic people. Today we think we have a little less of them, about 25 to 13 percent. We currently have 14,000 active cases and 987 people hospitalised, that’s about 7 percent. 7 to 10 percent is realistic in that there are more severe cases that require hospitalisation. We have 71 on respirators, which is 0.5 percent of the total active cases in Croatia,” he said.
He revealed that Croatia can cope with even over the current amount of 10,000 people tested in a day. “We still have about 20 to 25 percent of the space because in some counties the numbers are lower and they test less,” he said, adding that here in Zagreb, we’re “on the verge of not being able to cope anymore.”
“Because Zagreb now has huge numbers,” the HZJZ director said, the praising people who work day and night to process coronavirus test samples.
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