Epidemiological situation excellent despite large number of tourists, Croatian Public Health Institute head says

Croatia passes two million tourists mark (Photo credit:(Photo credit: dronepicr/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

ZAGREB, Aug 10 (Hina) – The head of the Croatian Public Health Institute (HZJZ), Krunoslav Capak, has said that the epidemiological situation in the country is favourable despite a large number of tourists vacationing in Croatia.

“It is unrealistic to expect that there will be no infected tourists but the figures are excellent considering the fact that currently there are close to 900,000 guests in the country,” Capak said in an interview with the N1 broadcaster on Monday.

Commenting on foreign media reports about some tourists becoming infected while holidaying in Croatia, he said that Croatia was part of the Early Warning and Response System through which member-countries communicated about such cases.

He stressed that Croatia was aware of the cases of which it had been officially notified.

“We have received several reports from the health authorities of Germany, Italy, Austria and Slovenia about tourists having contracted the disease here,” he said, stressing that the biggest problem currently were night clubs.

Capak also said that the national COVID-19 response team would most probably grant Dubrovnik Mayor Mato Frankovic’s request for amending the regulation on the docking of cruise ships in the Dubrovnik port, which now bans the arrival of cruise vessels with more than 200 passengers, because of the Italian MSC company which wants to bring tourists to Dubrovnik.

As of Sunday, there were 586 active coronavirus cases in Croatia. Among the active cases are 121 hospitalised patients, including eight patients on ventilators. 

Since 25 February 2020, when Croatia reported its first case of the coronavirus infection, there have 5,604 cases of the infection, with 157 fatalities and 4,861 recoveries.

Currently, 2,008 people are in self-isolation and to date, a total of 128,132 people have been tested.