July 28, 2020 – Krunoslav Capak, director of the Croatian Institute of Public Health, was a guest on HTV’s Dnevnik and said that intensive efforts were being made to limit gatherings from the autumn.
“We hope that the trend will be downward, we have already announced that the last week was downward, although we had a few peaks that bounced back from the average figure. We expect this trend to continue downward. This does not mean that we will have 10 cases tomorrow, but the trend will, in any case, be downward according to our research and model,” said Krunoslav Capak on 24 Sata.
Capak says this is a continuation of the first wave or tail of the epidemic.
“We have relaxed measures. Quarantine is excellent because it drastically reduces the transmission of coronavirus infection. However, when we started to relax the measures, the corona was economically and psychologically unsustainable, and with the relaxation of the measures it happened to us that the tail of the epidemic returned and that we have a larger number of infected,” said Krunoslav Capak.
“Intensive consideration is being given to limiting gatherings from the autumn”
Krunsolav Capak points out that we have to get used to coexisting with the virus.
“We think that these figures are not excessive; we would like them to be less. We have to get used to the coronavirus being here. We need to learn the new normal; we need to work intensively on reduction. We do not intend to return the quarantine, nor anyone in the world,” said Capak.
“Intensive thinking is being done to limit gatherings from the fall. Slovenia has a limit of 50. We had an excellent situation and we wanted to liberate the economy and social circumstances. We will not reduce that number now, but by prescribing stricter measures, by reporting gatherings where there are more than 100 people to the Civil Protection, which are then subject to the supervision of civil protection inspectors, we tried to put things in order,” he added.
Measures for the Operation Storm Celebration
“We are in contact with the organizers and there was a meeting today. Definite decisions, figures and ways of maintaining it have not been made, but we have a framework. According to the measures we have prescribed, we hope that this will be a low-risk event. There will be far fewer people and side events, food and drink consumption,” Capak said.
Self-isolation and politicians
“When determining self-isolation, it is important for a person to assess the situation. Assess what the nature of the contact was and whether or not there is a risk of transmitting the infection. There are certain circumstances in which a person who is in self-isolation can be allowed to perform a certain activity. Hrebak asked for testing and that finding needs to be analyzed; he got the opinion. I did not tell him to go to the session, but that he was not contagious,” said Krunoslav Capak.
Criticism of President Zoran Milanovic on the decisions of the Headquarters
“I’m not a legal expert or a doctor. In the past, whenever there was a danger of infecting other people, we made decisions based on the laws passed by the Parliament. This is also the case with this Law on the Protection of the Population from Infectious Diseases, which was passed in the Parliament, and we are guided by it in making decisions,” said Capak.
“The goal of our decisions that we make is to protect the lives of citizens,” concluded Capak.
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