ZAGREB, June 25, 2020 - The number of coronavirus cases in Croatia is on the rise because members of the national crisis response team and the prime minister set a bad example and because recommendations from the Public Health Institute (HZJZ) are being ignored, Ivan Bekavac of the Bridge party said on Thursday.
Bekavac was presenting the party's healthcare programme for the forthcoming parliamentary election.
He wondered how it was possible to organise a concert for 600 people in Knin, where the singer was infected with the coronavirus, without the HZJZ measures being observed.
He said that yesterday's decision to impose a 14-day quarantine for people coming to Croatia from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, and North Macedonia was not based on the medical profession and law but was a political decision aimed at shifting the public focus from the responsibility of the ruling parties to citizens of the neighbouring countries.
"In the context of the ongoing election campaign, this suits the HDZ," Bekavac said. "The rise in the number of infections shows that we should focus more on preventing a new wave of the coronavirus and less on political decisions at the expense of public health," he added.
Bekavac said that the Croatian hospital system needed reorganising and restructuring, calling for an end to the monopoly of the Croatian Health Insurance Agency (HZZ). He said that Bridge advocated market-based health insurance because citizens have the right to choose a healthcare scheme that suits them best and be responsible for their own health.
