August the 8th, 2021 - Croatian epidemiologist Bernard Kaic recently spoke about the situation surrounding covid passes, sometimes called ''covid passports'' in Croatia, as well as why cafes and bars are still having their work limited despite the good epidemiological picture and the continued vaccine rollout.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, when asked whether or not Croatia will remain ''orange'' on the ECDC coronavirus map until the end of the summer if we continue to behave like this, epidemiologist Bernard Kaic said:
"I don't know. Time will tell. We can see that the number of new cases is growing a bit, so if we continue to behave in the same way, the coast will probably not remain orange until the end of the summer. However, the measures should be adhered to a little more strictly.''
He also explained why the measures against one of the hardest hit sectors, the hospitality and catering industry, are still not being relaxed:
"If they're working outdoors and it's not crowded, it doesn't matter if it's 12:30 or past one in the morning, the only problem is if working after midnight would involve working indoors in a big, crowded, poorly ventilated area where everyone is very close to everyone else, in such situations, it's almost certain that someone there will be carrying the virus.''
He believes that covid certificates work well in Croatia.
“Both before the covid passes were introduced and before the vaccination rollout began, things could have been maintained with the use of masks, maintaining social distance, the disinfection of surfaces and hands, and the isolation of infected individuals. Even without these covid certificates, one could have lived with those epidemiological measures, but they don't provide total and absolute safety,'' explained epidemiologist Bernard Kaic for RTL, before adding:
''The biggest issue with these covid passes are those issued on the basis of someone having received a negative test in the last 48 or 72 hours because that can be a false negative. A person can be negative at the time of taking the test, and positive the next day if they became infected a few days ago. If there are many people obtaining these passes because they've just returned a negative test then there's an issue as these are people who haven’t been vaccinated and who haven't contracted the disease and then recovered from it. If there are a large number of such cases, someone among them will be infected, even if they had a negative test result two or three days ago.
If a large number of people have covid passes based on having returned a negative test, then that's a pretty good ground for the spread of the infection," epidemiologist Bernard Kaic pointed out.
As for the plan for autumn and the new school year, of course, there are no firm guidelines yet, nor can there be as the situation is fluid.
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