Croatian senior citizens homes fending off coronavirus

ZAGREB, April 4 (Hina) – The head of the Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ), Krunoslav Capak, said on Saturday that retirement homes had to date managed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among their beneficiaries.

According to information collected from the field, institutions caring for the elderly and infirm are sticking to the measures imposed to curb the infection, and the virus has not appeared to date in those institutions, Capak said at a news conference at which Croatia’s authorities presented latest coronavirus-related statistics.

Asked about the average age of the COVID-19 patients put on ventilators, the head of Zagreb’s Fran Mihaljevic Hospital for Infectious Diseases, Alemka Markotic, said that she could not provide the data for the whole of the country, noting that the youngest coronavirus patient on a ventilator in her hospital was born in 1974.

“In our hospital, the four current patients on ventilators due to COVID-19 are middle-aged with some underlying medical conditions,” Markotic said.

Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic called on Croatians not to relax in the coming warmer days.

“We are still battling the epidemic,” he underscored.

In the last 24 hours, out of 583 samples tested for COVID-19, 47 people have been positive, bringing their total to 1,126.

There have been four more deaths in the last 24 hours, all in a hospital in the eastern city of Osijek where four elderly patients with underlying medical conditions succumbed to the infection.

Currently, Croatia’s coronavirus-related death toll stands at 12, and 39 hospital patients diagnosed with this disease are on ventilators.

Since the first confirmed positive case registered on 25 February, a total of 119 people have recovered from this infectious disease, including 27 since yesterday.

Also, 9,833 samples have been tested since the outbreak of the disease in Croatia.