ZAGREB, July 26, 2020 - Over the past 24 hours Croatia has recorded 65 new coronavirus cases, bringing the number of active cases up to 855, and three persons have died, the national COVID-19 response team said on Sunday.

Currently, 142 patients are hospitalised, including nine on ventilators, and 3,271 persons are in self-isolation.

Since February 25, when the new virus was first reported in Croatia, there have been 4,857 cases, 136 persons have died and 3,866 recovered.

To date, 112,003 persons have been tested, including 1,489 over the past 24 hours.

ZAGREB, July 25, 2020 - Over the past 24 hours Croatia has recorded 77 new coronavirus cases, bringing the number of active cases to 881, and five more fatalities, the national COVID-19 response team said on Saturday.

Currently, 134 patients are hospitalised, including nine on ventilators.

Since February 25, when the novel coronavirus was first registered in Croatia, there have been 4,792 cases of infection, 133 deaths, and 3,778 recoveries.

Currently, 3,350 people are in self-isolation.

To date, 110,514 people have been tested, including 1,156 over the past 24 hours.

ZAGREB, July 24, 2020 - Health Minister Vili Beros said on Friday that 81 new coronavirus cases had been registered in Croatia in the last 24 hours, correcting the director of the Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ), Krunoslav Capak, who had previously confirmed 84 cases.

"Officially, according to the HZJZ platform, 81 new cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours, and Capak mistakenly said that there have been 84 cases," the health minister said at the first meeting of the new cabinet.

The number of active cases in Croatia is 1,032, 139 people are being treated in hospital and nine of them are on ventilators. Since the start of the outbreak in the country in late February, 128 have died, including eight in the past week, Beros said.

He said that the known hotspots relating to nightclubs in Zagreb and a monastery in the eastern town of Djakovo had been placed under control and that the number of new infections in these areas was on the decline. He added that smaller clusters in Sisak-Moslavina and Virovitica-Podravina Counties were also under control, while a hotspot in Ivankovo in Vukovar-Srijem County remained active.

The other continental counties are mainly calm, without any major clusters, while several smaller clusters have been observed in the coastal counties. However, 54.3 percent of the positive cases today come from self-isolation, which means that these persons are under observation, the minister said.

The national coronavirus response team reported 104 new cases on Thursday and 108 on Wednesday, and Beros said that most of the new cases were currently exhibiting milder symptoms. 

"Although the epidemiological situation is under control, we must not be satisfied because we have shown that we can do better. That's why I call on the citizens to observe simple rules to protect themselves and others from the infection," Beros said.

ZAGREB, July 23, 2020 - Over the past 24 hours Croatia has recorded 104 new coronavirus cases, which brings the number of active cases to 1,112, and three more dead, the national COVID-19 response team said on Thursday.

Currently 132 patients are hospitalised, including seven on ventilators. Over the past 24 hours 1,147 people have been tested for the virus, while a total of 108,222 have been tested to date.

Since February 25, when the first case in Croatia was confirmed, 4,634 persons have been infected with the novel coronavirus and 3,394 have recovered. The death toll is 128.   

July 23, 2020 - The Croatian Institute of Public Health announced new recommendations for holding concerts in Croatia.

Index.hr reports that the recommendations state that a person who has been abroad for the last 14 days and does not have a negative corona test taken in the last 48 hours must not participate in the gatherings.

The stage and performers must be four meters away from the audience. A distance of two meters between singers and musicians with wind instruments is also recommended.

The maximum number of people allowed to be at a concert or event is also limited, which is 500 people indoors and 1,000 people outdoors.

The Croatian Public Health Institute recommends that there be only seats, but in case of need for standing seats, it is recommended to set up standing tables, with a distance of one and a half meters. There may be a maximum of 100 standing places.

At all events, a 1.5-meter distance between people is recommended.

Recall, two men died at the Osijek Clinical Hospital on Wednesday, born in 1946 and 1945, bringing the number of coronavirus fatalities in Croatia to 125 since the beginning of the epidemic. There are 143 people in hospital and nine on a ventilator, and the average age of the patients is 47.1 years.

The director of the Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ), Krunoslav Capak, pointed out on Monday that there were no new hotspots, and that 40 patients were from Vukovar-Srijem County.

"Most of these cases are related to one wedding and several larger gatherings that took place in the last few days," he said, adding that there are a slightly higher number of new cases in Istria, 19, but half are contacts of previously ill people.

One tourist was also infected, but the share of tourists in the total number of patients is minor, in contrast to large weddings where 234 people became infected, which is more than 10 percent of the total number of patients in the last month.

Another 134 of them are associated with other types of larger gatherings, such as confirmations, first communions, and the like. More than 100 cases have been linked to nightclubs in the past month.

To read more about news in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page. 

ZAGREB, July 22, 2020 - In the last 24 hours, Croatia has recorded 108 new coronavirus cases and two deaths, Health Minister Vili Beros told a press conference on Wednesday.

The number of people currently infected with the novel virus is 1,127 and the death toll has reached 125.

Two men, one born in 1945 and the other in 1946, died in the KBC hospital in the eastern city of Osijek. Both had underlying pathological conditions and one of them was on a ventilator.

Since February 25, when the first case was reported in Croatia, the number of people testing positive for the COVID-19 virus has reached 4,530. A total of 106,805 people have been tested, including 1,279 in the last 24 hours, and the rate of positive cases is 4.24%.

Currently, 143 infected people are receiving hospital treatment and nine of them are on ventilators. The average age of patients is 47.1 years.

To date, 3,278 people have recovered from the infection. Twelve have been discharged from hospital in the last 24 hours, bringing their number to 1,051, while 78 have recovered at home, or 2,256 people in total.

July 21, 2020 - The first case of coronavirus infection has occurred in the Croatian Government: The Ministry of Public Administration issued a statement saying that their Minister, Ivan Malenica, tested positive for coronavirus yesterday. 

The Minister got tested after he first experienced symptoms on Monday, and his test results came back positive. He is feeling OK and is experiencing only mild symptoms of the disease. He plans to continue working from home, while self-isolating, the statement said.

The Ministry also reported that Malenica last saw the other cabinet members last Thursday and the Croatian media reports that the Minister also spent the weekend with his family in Šibenik. It has not been reported how the Minister might've gotten infected. The self-isolation measure has been issued for the Minister's driver, and the officials were given the list of his close contacts for the last 48 hours, which don't include the Ministry staff.

ZAGREB, July 21, 2020 - The national COVID-19 response team on Tuesday reported 49 new coronavirus cases, 1,116 active cases, and one more dead.

Among the active cases are 138 hospitalised patients, including nine on ventilators, the team said in a press release, adding that the death toll was now 123.

Since February 25, when SARS-CoV-2 was first recorded in Croatia, there have been 4,422 cases of infection with the novel coronavirus.

At the moment 3,937 persons are self-isolating. To date, 105,526 persons have been tested, including 1,394 over the past 24 hours.

July 21, 2020 - On Monday, 25 coronavirus cases were recorded in Croatia, which is the lowest number in the last month.

Last weekend, 309 gatherings of more than 100 people were held, and we will see the outcome of that in five to seven days. A particularly problematic gathering was a wedding in Ivankovo, where 50 people became infected. Vukovar-Srijem County is the current focus of the corona crisis and, thus, the county with the strictest measures.

Index.hr reports that, according to Minister Bozinovic, new measures will be introduced for the whole of Croatia this weekend, and we will find out on Wednesday precisely what these measures are.

The director of the Croatian Institute of Public Health, Krunoslav Capak, was a guest on RTL Danas on Monday.

"The National Headquarters has been talking for some time about limiting the number of participants in various gatherings, which is an epidemiological problem. I guess it will happen, but I can't say. We are talking about the number that would be allowed, there is no decision yet on the agenda," Capak said.

In Slovenia, the maximum number of participants at a gathering is 50, and at the request of the Health Institute, this number may be higher with special restrictions. There are many more at gatherings in our country, and Capak says that the Croatian Public Health Institute cannot prescribe it individually.

Asked if the Headquarters were wrong not to impose restrictions on gatherings earlier, Capak replied: "We are continuously talking about the need to get used to the coronavirus lifestyle. We felt that these numbers we gave, with the limitations we gave in the recommendations, were not excessive. If everyone followed the recommendations, the situation would be better. Whether it is better to discuss stricter measures and oversight of those measures or to limit the number is very difficult to decide. We try to balance between letting the population live normally, but with recommendations and education to bring the number of patients lower."

To the reporter's claim that it is similar to the Swedish model, Capak reminds us that Croatia is very far from Sweden.

"They are the most liberal country in Europe and one of the most liberal in the world. They did not have a quarantine. They let the economy work normally, schools and kindergartens worked, it is a completely different situation than in Croatia," he said.

He described what an epidemiologist's hunt for the contacts of an infected person from a wedding looks like.

"In two cases when there was a large gathering, epidemiologists informed citizens through the media to put themselves in isolation and report to an epidemiologist or doctor if they were at the gathering, but even that was not well received among citizens. We corrected that, we offered help to epidemiologists to talk to all these participants, it’s a terribly hard job. Imagine you have to contact 300 people in a couple of days. We have cases where people don’t want to admit they’ve been in contact, especially if it’s a company that, if it closes, can’t function. We appeal to the citizens that it is very important, when they are in self-isolation, then they cannot transmit the disease," he said.

He announced new measures for concerts

"We didn't close concerts, but the question is whether it is profitable for a musician to hold a concert with a third of the seats in the hall," he said, and when asked what would change for concerts, he added:

"We would increase the number of participants, to mark all the seats, and to make ticket sales exclusively electronic. Seating will be likely; standing is very difficult to control."

Bozinovic: New measures this weekend

Minister Davor Bozinovic also spoke about the new measures for Dnevnik Nova TV. As he said, stricter measures will start being applied this weekend.

"We will tighten something," Bozinovic said, and when asked by a journalist what exactly, he said the number of people at large gatherings would be limited.

“It turns out you can’t change tradition overnight, and the fact is that all those gatherings where people hug, which is normal, are susceptible to the spread of the coronavirus,” he said.

He says it is up to the epidemiologist how much that number would be limited, but it is certainly less than a hundred, and the measures will be adopted to start to be applied this weekend.

To read more about news in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, July 20, 2020 - In the last 24 hours, of 1,028 COVID tests performed in Croatia, 25 have returned positive, the country's coronavirus crisis management team stated on Monday.

Currently, there are 1,150 active cases, 57 fewer than the day before, Health Minister Vili Beros said at a news conference in Zagreb today.

Unfortunately, in the last 24 hours, two people have died due to the COVID complications, bringing the total number of deaths to 122, the minister said adding that those victims were two elderly women with underlying medical conditions.

Since 25 February when Croatia reported its first confirmed case of COVID, 104,132 tests have been performed, and 4,370 people have been diagnosed with this infection.

The percentage of positive tests is 4.20%.

To date, 3,098 people have recovered from this communicable disease.

Currently, 147 COVID patients are being treated in hospitals, including nine placed on ventilators.