ZAGREB, March 29, 2020 - Restricting human rights is out of the question, people are increasingly aware that the current situation is an emergency and extreme situation, which is why measures by the national civil protection authority are extreme, Minister of the Interior Davor Božinović said on Sunday.
"The institutions of this state, the government and the parliament, are functioning. The national civil protection authority is adopting decisions in line with epidemiologists' recommendations and they have to be implemented at the level of local civil protection authorities," Božinović, who heads the national civil protection team, said when asked to comment on President Zoran Milanović's statement that decisions restricting citizens' rights had to be adopted by a two-thirds majority.
Božinović said that during the current crisis, last Sunday's earthquake in Zagreb was a critical moment, when a large number of citizens went out and some left Zagreb, mostly for the coast, where medical capacity in the wintertime is not as good as in the rest of the year.
He explained that that was the reason why the authority had introduced a ban on leaving one's place of residence.
Božinović confirmed that a prison guard in Split had been diagnosed with COVID-19, that some of the people who had been in contact with him were in self-isolation and that the situation in Split was under control.
He said that 99 police officers were currently in self-isolation, and that four police officers were infected. Self-isolation measures have been lifted for 25 police officers.
More coronavirus news can be found in the Lifestyle section.
