Children to go back to school in Croatia, epidemiologist says

ZAGREB, Aug 10 (Hina) – Children will go to school, Croatian Public Health Institute head Krunoslav Capak said on Monday, underscoring that the current epidemiological situation with a smaller number of infections indicates that children should normally start attending classes.

“Children will go to school. We have a good epidemiological situation, our case numbers are low with a declining trend and now children should, could and must go to school,” Capak said for RTL Danas newscast.

He said that the national coronavirus response team had held a meeting with the Education Ministry, which had formed an advisory task force that includes members of the coronavirus response team, epidemiologists and the ministry’s experts, who will decide on those matters.

He expects that the advisory task force would have its first meeting next week and start making decisions on the beginning of the school year.

No confirmation of Czech or German reports about their citizens’ becoming infected in Croatia

As for reports by some countries, such as the Czech Republic and Germany, that their citizens became infected on holiday in Croatia, he said that local epidemiologists had checked the information they had read in the papers but had not, he underscored, received confirmation “that that really is the case.”

He noted that the EU had an early warning and response system for communicable diseases, which can be used to notify the country where someone became infected.

In that case, Capak said, Croatian epidemiologists need to investigate where those people were, whether they contracted the disease there, if measures should be adopted in the facility where they were etc.

We have received official reports of several cases of infection in tourists

“We only react to official reports, not to what is read in the papers or on portals. For us that is not an official report,” he said, adding that they had received official reports for some countries with “several reported cases”.

Cruise ships should be allowed to dock in Dubrovnik

Capak said cruise boats, when they request it, should be allowed to dock in Dubrovnik, underscoring that the coronavirus response team had carefully analysed measures by two Italian cruise ships cruising the Mediterranean.

“The measures they introduced always look good on paper and they are really good, so we think that if they really are complying with them, it is possible and they should be allowed to dock,” he said.

The team, he added, are still in a little dilemma over what would happen if there is an infected person on the ship, in which direction the person would be evacuated, whether they would return to their home country, to Italy or request that from us, “which I think should not be an option”.