ZAGREB, December 5, 2020 - The head of the COVID-19 crisis management team in the northern city of Varazdin said on Saturday that the spread of coronavirus could not be stopped in Varazdin County until the hotspots in industrial plants were dealt with.

After the Varazdin City Council's special session on the occasion of the City Day, observed on 6 December in memory of the city's patron saint, St. Nicholas, the COVID-19 crisis management team's head  Zlatan Avar said that the hotspots of the infection had occurred in industrial plants and added that in some factories between 30% and 40% people had contracted the virus.

Avar called on the city's authorities to finance rapid antigen tests in the area and in this context he praised the example set by the City of Zagreb.

You can see incidence rates for the municipality of Kneginec, Trnovec Bartolovecki and Varazdin where there are industrial plants, and the situation in those places is worse than elsewhere in the county, Avar said.On Saturday, the local authorities confirmed 319 new infections with coronavirus and nine deaths linked to this disease in the last 24 hours.

In the last seven days, the coronavirus incidence rate in the county was 1,170 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The city's hospital is currently treating 262 COVID-19 patients, of whom 21 are in intensive care wards.

Since the onset of the epidemic, 132 people in the county have died of the complications linked to the COVID-19 disease.

County crisis response team head refutes claims about hotspots in factories

The head of the COVID-19 crisis management team for Varazdin County, Robert Vugrin, said at a news conference on Saturday afternoon that more stringent restriction imposed in the county two weeks ago had led to the stagnation of new cases. 

He refuted Avar's claims about hotpsots in the industrial plants and said that local transmissions had led to a surge in the number of new infections.

The director of the Varazdin hospital, Nenad Kudelic said that today the hospital registered 10 fewer COVID patients than yesterday and that this decrease had occurred after a streak of many days with a rise in hospitalisation numbers.