COVID-19 in Croatia: Krunoslav Capak Says All Measures on Table
August 22, 2020 - For the third day in a row, a record number of new cases was recorded in Croatia, and most of them among the young. On Friday, 265 new cases were recorded, and in Split-Dalmatia County alone, there were more than a hundred. A look at COVID-19 in Croatia.
Index.hr reports that the director of the CNIPH, Krunoslav Capak, said on Friday that the National Civil Protection Headquarters would exchange information on the current epidemiological situation at a meeting with local headquarters on Monday and consider the possibility of introducing new measures.
At that meeting, the National Headquarters will consider the possibility for local headquarters to propose measures for their area, given that they see better from the local level, Capak told RTL Danas.
"All measures are open, from wearing masks to reducing the number of people at gatherings and so on. All of this could be implemented," Capak said, adding that county headquarters could tell them what their biggest problem is, their biggest focus and what measures could be taken to reduce the number of infected.
He said that the county headquarters could not make such decisions, but only the National Headquarters, which can support the local headquarters to some extent.
Asked if only Split-Dalmatia County may have to wear masks, Capak said that it is possible and it is being discussed hypothetically, which does not mean that it will be so. He noted that there are other counties with a high incidence, who will be asked to say what their biggest problem is.
The local approach can also be applied to teaching
Capak says Croatia could better adapt epidemiological measures to local contagious situations, which could be applied to the teaching regime.
For now, school classes are scheduled to begin on September 7, but that, Capak says, will depend on the epidemiological situation.
If there is any significant deterioration and if a large number of school-age children are among those infected, the system will be ready for all scenarios, Capak says.
He explained that care would be taken that if the increase occurs in one county, school starts in other counties where there are no patients.
Was the decision to open nightclubs wrong?
Regarding the consequences of the work of nightclubs, Capak reminded that the authorities decided to hold certain cultural events in them in order to help overcome the problematic situation that prevailed for some time.
If the clubs were to close, young people would find another place, like now when they gather in squares, streets and parks, he said.
He said that there is control, but they are against repression. "We are not a police state; we think it is best to appeal and educate that the situation is not good," he said.
According to data from ten days ago, among those infected in the Croatian epidemiological database, in 20 percent of cases, some asymptomatic patients do not manifest the infection, and now that number could be slightly higher, said Capak.
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Croatian Startup Company Wants To Create 'Superfood', And That Is Just The Beginning
August 21, 2020 – They focus on a high amount of micronutrients in products and traditional canning methods, primarily fermentation.
As Poslovni dnevnik writes, Nika Pintar and Bruno Balen are the founders of the Croatian startup called Cidrani, which has the vision to make every food a superfood. The team currently consists of four people, with about 20 external associates.
Cidrani was founded last year and launched its first products on the market in the middle of the corona crisis. In the first weeks of sales, they entered about 20 locations in Croatia, and they plan to have a minimum of 50 products by the end of the year.
They cooperate with dozens of subcontractors and procure raw ingredients according to quality criteria. Cidrani has seven products, of which the most sought after is Cidrani Honey – live apple cider vinegar with "wild mother“ culture infused with raw honey, and a novelty in their offer is Four Seasons, which could soon surpass Honey in terms of sales.
“With our Four Seasons gastro functional line, we have also been admitted to the SIAL Innovation prizes, one of the leading competitions for innovative functional food products in the world. Four Seasons is a unique concept that combines fermented herbs, raw honey, and apple cider vinegar in addition to dishes rich in probiotics, which is also a rhapsody for the palate because we believe that a healthy diet should attract with its taste,” Pintar and Balen point out.
Further plans
They will soon come out with another branch of Cidranija - Pharma, which will focus on the best from folk and traditional medicine, and it is a combination that includes extracts of Nordic mushrooms.
In addition to the webshop, their products can be found in specialized and health food stores, and by the end of the month, they should enter the chain of boutique stores from Istria. Their products can also be found in Zagreb’s restaurants Tač, Vodnjanka and Dubravkin put, and they plan to expand to the rest of Croatia and create recipes in collaboration with the best chefs and cocktail masters.
“We expect to be present at 500 locations in Croatia, Slovenia, and the Netherlands by the end of the year, combined through Ho-Re-Ca, retail, and specialized concept stores. Our sales are growing rapidly with 70% of repeat purchases. In the fall, we will realize the first seed investment, and the German investors with whom we are in negotiations consider us one of the most innovative food startups in Europe,” said the co-founders.
At the moment, they are doing everything in Croatia, but they are working on the new products that they are launching in September with partners in Bulgaria and Portugal.
“We came to the Netherlands for two months and we expect that by October at least 70 percent of sales will be realized outside Croatia,” said the co-founders adding that they also play to extend their market on Benelux countries, Scandinavia and DACH – Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
As they say, innovative products are just the beginning, and what they want is to open a wellbeing retreat center for cell regeneration and intergenerational education about a new lifestyle.
“The first such resort will be in Istria, but we would like to franchise the concept and expand to Switzerland, Ireland, and Sweden,” announce Nika Pintar and Bruno Balen.
COVID-19 Response Team Calls On Young People To Avoid High-Risk Contact
ZAGREB, Aug 21, 2020 - Croatia has registered a record high in daily cases with 265 new infections, which was to be expected given the tourist season, the national COVID-19 response team said on Friday, calling on young people who had been in high-risk situations to avoid contact with others.
The head of the Croatian Public Health Institute, Krunoslav Capak, reiterated that they had introduced measures for night clubs and said that the situation on the ground showed that that had been a good move, but there were some "acts of resourcefulness".
It is not good, he said, that young people are moving from clubs to bars and restaurants which are allowed to work longer. There are also cases of wedding parties being moved from Dalmatia to Herzegovina, he said.
Therefore, the national COVID-19 response team will on Monday meet with local teams to adopt measures that would apply locally and restrict the working hours of facilities and reduce gatherings.
Asked about infections related to the Feast of the Assumption of Mary and the Sinjska Alka tournament, Capak said that there were two people in one continental county who did not know where they had got infected, and they had been to those events, but there were no cases in Split-Dalmatia County related to the events.
He noted that the team had achieved a good balance between opening up in the season and protecting people's health. He believes the measures are good and that most tourists feel safe and hope that the season will continue for a few more days or weeks.
Asked about his statement that the laid-back personality of Dalmatian people was to blame for the latest coronavirus statistics, Capak said that when he had spoken of relaxed behavior he had meant it in a good way, "except during a period of infection when caution is necessary."
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Igor Tudor Leaves Hajduk Split to Join Juventus as Pirlo's Assistant
August 21, 2020 - Igor Tudor has left Hajduk to become the assistant coach at Juventus, the Split club announced on Friday.
"As of today, Igor Tudor is no longer the coach of Hajduk after he decided to accept the offer of the new Juventus coach, Andrea Pirlo, to join him in Italy as an assistant in the professional staff.
Now the former coach of the 'Whites' spent eight months in his second term on the bench of Hajduk, and led them in 18 official matches.
We wish coach Tudor a lot of luck and success in his future career," Hajduk wrote on its official website.
Tudor received an offer last weekend to return to Juventus, the club he played for from 1998 to 2007, after Andrea Pirlo took over the Turin club.
After training at Poljud on Monday, Tudor told Hajduk leaders that he would like to take the opportunity to go to Italy, where he led Udinese on two occasions. It was just a matter of waiting for the compensation amount to be agreed upon. The Italian champion will pay Hajduk 450 thousand euros.
Hajduk decided that Tudor's assistant Hari Vukas will lead the team in the match against Osijek, which is scheduled for Sunday at 5:55 pm at City Garden Stadium.
Vukas' first assistant will be Jurica Vucko, and Toni Golem joins the professional staff of the first team, who recently took over juniors II. In his career so far, he has already had experience working in the professional staff of Hajduk's first team.
Goalkeeping coach Hrvoje Sunara remains, and Toni Modric and Sime Versic are still in charge of preparing the players.
Pirlo ended his playing career three years ago, during which he won the 2006 World Cup with Italy and reached the Euro final in 2012. While playing for Milan (2001-2011) and Juventus (2011-2015), he won two Champions League titles (2003, 2007) and once again played in the final (2015) with six Italian league titles (two with Milan, four with Juventus).
The former Croatia national team player made 174 appearances for Juventus and another 39 for Siena. As a coach in Italy, he led Udinese and saved them from relegation in two seasons. He also led PAOK, Galatasaray, and Karabukspor. Tudor took over Hajduk in December last year, and under his leadership, the Split club finished the season in fifth place.
Source: Index.hr
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Decisions Related To Coronavirus Epidemic Not Political, Says Bozinovic
ZAGREB, Aug 21, 2020 - The head of the national COVID-19 response team, Davor Bozinovic, said on Friday that decisions regarding the coronavirus epidemic were not political decisions.
"Tourism is an important economic sector in Croatia, however, we opened up based on scientific data about the virus not being so dangerous in the summertime, as evidenced by the latest clinical symptoms in patients. The assessment that it is possible to open up was an epidemiological one," Bozinovic told reporters when asked to comment on Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic's statement that the decision on the tourist season was a political one and to say which other decisions were political.
Asked why the situation was problematic in Split-Dalmatia County, where earlier in the day 103 new cases of the COVID-19 disease were reported, Bozinovic said that there were more than 800,000 people in the county at present, that its towns and communities have much fewer residents in the winter, and that a large number of people from neighboring countries were staying there.
Commenting on scientist Ivan Djikic's statement that it had been wrong to allow night clubs to operate, Bozinovic said that the COVID-19 response team had adopted the necessary measures, carried out controls, and when cases of infection were detected, it banned night clubs from working after midnight.
The measures imposed by the team resulted in a drop in new infections, he said.
Bozinovic also said that they were not worried about reports that a Facebook initiative would file a class-action lawsuit against the COVID-19 response team and that its objective was to maintain a balance.
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Nikola Tesla Returns To Gospić After 30 Years
August 22, 2020 – After being destroyed in the war, the famous statue of genius Nikola Tesla will finally return to his home town
Following a 30 year absence, the famous statue of Nikola Tesla will be returned to his home town of Gospić. The original Tesla monument that once stood in the central town square, created by Croatian sculptor Frano Kršinić, was blown up during the 1990s Homeland War.
Gospić mayor Karlo Starčević today signed a contract approving construction works for the renovation of the square in front of the Gospić Culture Information Centre, where the Nikola Tesla statue will be placed. The contract is worth about HRK 1.8 million.
The location where the monument will stand is planned as a quiet area with several benches and gravel footpaths. The statue is an exact replica of the one previously lost to Gospić. Copies of this statue currently reside outside the School of Electrical Engineering section of Belgrade University and on the American side of Niagara Falls (main picture).
Nikola Tesla is honoured on both sides of Niagara Falls. This is his statue on the Canadian side © Milan Suvajac
An inventor and hugely innovative engineer, Nikola Tesla is best known for pioneering the alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. AC enables electricity to be provided safely to every home, street and business today. Tesla was born in 1856 in the village of Smiljan, in Lika, just six kilometres from Gospić.
In 1862, his family moved to Gospić where Tesla's father worked as an Orthodox parish priest. Nikola Tesla himself was supposed to follow his father and his mother's father into the Orthodox priesthood. Thankfully, he did not. In 1870, Nikola Tesla moved to nearby Karlovac to attend the Higher Real Gymnasium. A new Nikola Tesla exhibition centre is currently being built there, next door to the place of his former studies.
After Karlovac, Nikola Tesla continued his studies in Austria, and then spent some time teaching and working in Hungary. He eventually got a job working for Thomas Edison's company in Paris. While there, his incredibly innovative work was soon noticed and he was invited to go and work for the company in America.
Nikola Tesla, pictured before his work in America © State Archives
Thomas Edison - also a pioneering inventor - is frequently cited as one of the most innovative figures in the development of electricity supply. However, Edison was adamant that direct current (DC) would be the best way to distribute electricity. The DC system he championed was in direct competition to that proposed by his one-time employee, Tesla. Despite Edison's wealth and power, the DC system he fought hard to impose proved to be impractical and unsafe. Instead, the AC distribution design, perfected by Tesla, became the standard supply system that the world uses today.
Nikola Tesla stayed in America for the rest of his life and continued to create countless pioneering inventions. He worked within the fields of early x-rays, wireless power supply, electromagnetic radiation and radio waves, before his death in 1943. In the years since he died, interest in the enigmatic Nikola Tesla has only grown.
David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla in Christoper Nolan's 2006 movie The Prestige © Warner Brothers
A mystique continues to surround him, not least because many of his wondrous ideas remain unrealised. Nikola Tesla has been portrayed in film by Nicholas Hoult and David Bowie (the latter, famously, in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige). The national airport in Belgrade, Serbia is named after him, as is Serbia's largest power plant. In Croatia, over 130 streets are named after Nikola Tesla.
MP Grbin Hands In Candidacy For SDP Leader
ZAGREB, Aug 21, 2020 - SDP parliamentarian Pedja Grbin said on Friday that he had handed in his candidacy for the Social Democratic Party leader with almost 1,400 signatures in support of his presidential bid.
Asked about another two candidates for the SDP presidency, Grbin said that Mirela Ahmetovic is an excellent mayor and Zeljko Kolar is an excellent county prefect and both are serious politicians and SDP members who, after the election could be a part of his team.
Grbin said that SDP's defeat in the 5 July parliamentary elections should serve as a springboard for transforming the party for the better.
He confirmed that a problem exists regarding party membership and membership fees, because of the 33,000 members of the party only about 6,000 regularly pay membership fees, he said adding that this was because of the membership's disappointment in the party.
The election won't be legitimate if the majority of membership does not vote
I appealed to the leadership and that has brought results and regular paying members now count about 12,000 and I hope there will be more, he said.
He believes that the election will not be legitimate if at least half or a good portion of SDP members would not vote in the intra-party elections set for 26 September.
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Kolar Presents Candidacy For SDP Leader
ZAGREB, Aug 21, 2020 - Krapina-Zagorje County Prefect Zeljko Kolar on Friday presented his candidacy to run for the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) at the internal election, saying that he will advocate a modern Croatia with an efficient judicial system and a functioning market economy.
"My desire to run as a candidate did not come overnight. That was not a spontaneous move but the product of my wish for more than necessary changes in the party," he claimed.
He said that he would develop the SDP as a modern center-left party while overcoming rifts inside the SDP.
Thinking about candidacy for prime minister, not a priority now
Asked whether he would be a candidate for the prime minister's position, Kolar said that that was not a priority now, however, whoever has the best chance of defeating Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic should be the candidate.
That decision is up to the presidency and main committee, Kolar said, and added that he would be willing to support whoever will be the best option.
Remarking on membership numbers which his opponent Grbin spoke about, Kolar said that it was disastrous that of the 34,000 SDP members only 11,500 pay their membership fees and announced that one of his first steps would be to deal with the issue of membership.
Grbin was a member of the presidency in two terms, he could have dealt with that. I wasn't because I was conducting the duties of county prefect, said Kolar.
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Croatia Reports 265 COVID-19 Cases, New Record High Number
ZAGREB, Aug 21, 2020 - Croatia has 265 new cases of the coronavirus infection, the highest daily number so far, but Health Minister Vili Beros does not consider this to be a significant departure from recent trends and believes that it is due to the summer tourist season.
Speaking at a regular news conference of the national COVID-19 response team on Friday, Beros said that 50% or 137 of the new cases were people who were in self-isolation, which, he said, showed that epidemiologists were doing a good job.
Beros noted that 1,647 tests had been conducted in the past 24 hours and that currently, 6,446 people were self-isolating.
There has been one fatality in the past 24 hours, an elderly woman.
The death toll stands at 169. Eleven people have been hospitalized since yesterday, which puts the total number of hospitalized patients at 135, including 12 who are still on ventilators, Beros said.
There are currently 1,842 active cases of the COVID-19 disease in the country.
Beros believes that the latest figures do not depart radically from those in recent days and that they are due to Croatia being open to tourists, with a large number of foreign nationals having vacationed on its coast.
The increase in infections is certainly also due to "a certain kind of behavior in the summertime," said Beros.
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Brits Are Leaving: British Airways Sending Larger Planes to Croatia
August 21, 2020 - After the UK added Croatia to the quarantine list on Thursday, British Airways is busy bringing citizens back to Britain.
Croatian Aviation reports that in order to meet the high demand that arose after Croatia was included on the list of quarantine countries, British Airways will land in all three Croatian airports today with an A321NEO aircraft.
British Airways normally operates to Zagreb, Split and Dubrovnik on smaller capacity aircraft, but today, due to high demand from British tourists who want to return home before the new measures come into force (14-day self-isolation for all passengers coming from Croatia), regular routes to the three mentioned airports use a larger capacity aircraft - A321 NEO. This aircraft has a capacity of as many as 235 passengers (for comparison, A319 and A320 aircraft with a capacity of 144 to 180 seats usually operate in Croatia).
In addition to British Airways, which will operate two flights from Split Airport today, three easyJet aircraft (capacity 180 passengers) will take off for London, as well as WizzAir aircraft A321 (capacity 230 passengers).
In addition to the British Airways flight, Dubrovnik Airport will have another EasyJet flight to London and one to Bristol (on both flights the maximum capacity is 180 passengers).
Today, Croatia Airlines will operate a regular flight on the Zagreb - London Heathrow route, but instead of the A319, a larger capacity aircraft - the A320 - will operate today.
Given the number of seats offered, it is clear that this is not enough for all tourists from Croatia to return to the UK on time, before the introduction of restrictive measures. After all, certain routes have already been sold out, while prices on some flights have exceeded the average several times.
We remind you that from Saturday, August 22, all passengers entering the UK from Croatia will have to go into 14 days of self-isolation.
According to information from the UK, there are currently 20,000 tourists from that country in Croatia. Britain views Croatia as a whole, without regional or county demarcations, and warns that the situation has deteriorated dramatically compared to three weeks ago.
Britain refers to the latest data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, according to which Croatia has recorded 37.7 confirmed infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the last two weeks. For comparison, Britain records 21.2 infected, Slovenia 12.8, and Sweden 39.5.
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