ZAGREB, Aug 19, 2020 - The head of the national COVID-19 response team, Davor Bozinovic, said on Wednesday that the regulation banning the work of night clubs after midnight would definitely be extended considering that most new cases of infection are young people who have visited night clubs, notably in central Dalmatia.
"The ban will definitely be extended, we'll see if there is room for some modifications because there have been attempts to bypass the ban through restaurants and bars, which are allowed to work after midnight," he said, noting that inspectors would continue checking up on those establishments.
Croatia is not an unsafe country
"Of course Croatia is not an unsafe country in any segment of security," he said in a comment on Slovenian government spokesman Jelko Kacin's claim that Croatia is an unsafe country due to a surge in the number of new COVID-19 cases.
He said that it was a fact that the number of new infections in Croatia was growing but that Croatia was also one of the few countries whose tourism did exist in the current pandemic, with figures for July and August equalling up to 70 and 80% of last year's results.
"There is greater movement of people, people tend to relax when on holidays so the increase in new infections is not unexpected," he said.
He said that most of some 100,000 visiting Slovenians were staying in Istria, Primorje-Gorski Kotar, and Lika-Senj counties, which together had ten new infections in the last 24 hours.
He said that those guests felt safe in Croatia. "In order to convince them to return home, as soon as possible, one is possibly fomenting tension but we are confident that tourism trade will continue and that visitors will continue coming from all the countries that have now started to call on their nationals to come back home."
Bozinovic noted that the epidemiological situation was good in regions where tourists were staying, except for a few counties in central Dalmatia.
Germany could put us on the red list as well
Asked if he believed it was a matter of days when Germany, too, would put Croatia on a list of unsafe countries, he said that it was possible.
"That is possible but I would like to say that they all know very well the situation in our counties, in tourist destinations, and I'm confident every country will have to make effort to explain its decision to its nationals because less than 1% of tourists staying here have become infected," said Bozinovic.
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