ZAGREB, Aug 16, 2020 - The government of Israel on Sunday decided to abolish the obligatory 14-day quarantine for arrivals from Croatia and 19 more countries, according to the information published on the government's website.

The 20 countries that are now added to the green list are 15 European states including Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, Hungary, and Slovenia apart from Croatia. The abolishment also refers to arrivals from Canada and New Zealand.

Although infection with coronavirus remains relatively high in Israel, four countries now accept Israeli tourists: Croatia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and four regions of Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, Corfu, and Crete). In the said Greek regions, the weekly quota for Israeli holidaymakers is 600.

However, travellers leaving Israel for these countries will have to be tested for coronavirus before departure at Ben Gurion International Airport.

Israel with a nine-million-strong population has to date reported 92,000 cases of the infection with COVID-19 and 679 deaths due to the complications from the infection. According to the University of John Hopkins, this is a high incidence rate, however, the mortality rate is low.

August 16, 2020 - Italian TV reports shocking disregard for social distancing as young Italians go wild on Pag

Italian TV have aired shocking footage showing their young countrymen on holiday. The report, aired on the TG1 segment of Rai Uno TV shows hundreds of island holidaymakers packed into nightclubs as young Italians go wild on Pag. They display a wanton disregard for any social distancing.

One young Italian lady is interviewed and claims there is no more Coronavirus. Another, a male, says he'll get tested upon returning home, although he's not worried because he is young. Perhaps his elderly relatives should be more worried?

Young italians go wild on Pag

After a slow start to the season, scenes from the report appear to show the famous nightlife of Pag now in full swing. With so many holidaymakers from Italy currently enjoying the island, its clubs and the alcohol they serve, it appears it would be a struggle for the venues themselves to enforce social distancing regulations. But, the holidaymakers do not appear keen to take on the responsibility for themselves.

While it makes a change for judgemental TV reports from the Croatian holiday season for once not to feature British youths, this is hardly a matter for amusement; Italy was one of the first European countries hit hard by COVID-19. It took a sustained and painful effort to bring the number of infections down. Italians at home must be watching such scenes with horror. They are terrified of the virus re-emerging at the uncontrollable level seen earlier this year. Already 30 young people who had been on holiday in Croatia this year returned home with Coronavirus infections.

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ZAGREB, Aug 16, 2020 - In the last 24 hours, out of 1,377 tests performed for coronavirus, 151 have returned positive, the Croatian national COVID-19 management team reported on Sunday.

The number of the active cases stands at 1,185, reads the team's press release. Of them, 126 patients are being treated in hospitals, including 11 patients placed on ventilators.

The team reported one more COVID-related fatality, and the death toll stands at 166.

Since 25 February when Croatia reported its first confirmed case of the infection, 6,571 people have been diagnosed with this communicable disease, and of them 5,220 have recovered.

The country's health authorities have to date performed 137,657 tests for the infection to date.

ZAGREB, Aug 16, 2020 - Austria braces for traffic jams on motorways and at border crossings on Sunday, as travellers are expected to shorten their holidays after Vienna put Croatia on the list of high-risk countries due to a resurgence of COVID cases.

On Saturday, the Austrian Automobile Club (ÖAMTC) stated that it expected that traffic from the south to intensify in the evening on Saturday evening and during Sunday.

According to some figures, there are currently 3,000 Austrians vacationing in Croatia. However, Vienna believes that there are many more people from Austria who are spending their summer holidays in Croatia.

The Austrian government decided to include Croatia on the list of high-risk countries on Friday after Croatia reported a record highly number of COVID cases in a day.

As of Monday, 17 August, travellers returning from Croatia must show a current negative test for coronavirus or undergo testing within 48 hours.

This would obviously prompt some of those holiday-makers to shorten their stay in Croatia.

ZAGREB, Aug 16, 2020 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Saturday that Croatia won the first halftime of the struggle against coronavirus and called for heightened alert in the autumn. 

Asked by the press about the current topics, including the developments surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, Plenkovic said that Croatia could be satisfied with the tourist season given the circumstances.

He went on to say that the country won the first halftime of the match against COVID-19, and "we must be on high alert in the autumn."

Commenting on the outcome of the current tourist season, Plenkovic said that the results seemed better than expected, considering the projections made a few months ago.

 As for a resurgence of new cases over the recent weeks, Plenkovic said that it could have been expected in a certain sense, given a higher number of people staying now in Croatia.

"We have appealed all the time, for responsible behaviour, particularly among young people, and for keeping a distance. This obviously has not been observed in nightclubs," the premier said in his comment on indications that a majority of the newly diagnosed patients are young people.

Asked how all that could impact the remainder of the tourist season due to warnings from Austria and Slovenia concerning the arrivals from Croatia, Plenkovic said he had talked with his counterparts from those countries about that topic.

Those countries look at the issue through their statistical figures, they have their scales, they count how many of those who have returned from holidays abroad are infected. Having in mind the fact that their school year starts on 1 September, they are afraid of the spread of the infection in schools, the premier said.

He expects the Croatian diplomatic network, the ministries of tourism and health to communicate the epidemiological picture in greater detail, broken down by counties.

Plenkovic, who was on a visit to the Marian shrine of Trsat in Rijeka, on the Feast of the Assumption, said that the situation in that Primorje-Gorski Kotar County as well as in Istria and Lika was satisfactory.

From the perspective of the average tourist, who comes from a country where there are more people infected with the new coronavirus than there are in Croatia, there are no obstacles to spending their holiday on the Croatian Adriatic, in a well-known destination.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes on the 14th of August, 2020, maybe Croatia should stop bragging about this year's tourism results if it wants to continue at this same pace until the end of the season? It seems that other member states of the European Union are getting irritated at the fact that Croatia is managing to make money from their citizens, who should, in their view, instead be spending that money at home and helping their national economies recover instead of getting sunburn on the Croatian Adriatic.

Some are asking the question of how else we can interpret the decisions of certain countries to close their borders to Croatia, which has a more favourable epidemiological situation than most of the Mediterranean, as well as countries in the rest of Europe? Coronavirus has become a powerful excuse for protectionism, even in the European Union, which likes to describe itself wholeheartedly as anything but that, and it remains to be seen how, in the long-term, such behaviour which is neither transparent nor fair will pay off.

Kudos must be given to the countries that have issued vouchers to their residents to strengthen national tourism when the itch to get away begins. Croatia has good roads, and despite the problems, it has a decent health system, it behaved excellently in the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, there were relatively few infected people and the vast majority of people respected and continue to respect the obligation to wear a mask.

From the perspective of the average tourist who comes from a country where there are more infected people than there are in Croatia, this all looks fantastic and makes a person feel safe. This led to as many as a million people entering Croatia in the first nine days of August, accounting for 70 percent of last year's number of overnight stays in that same period. In July, Croatian tourism had a turnover of 60 percent when compared to the turnover of last year, which is also a lot considering that it was at that point when things were starting to open up again.

Millions of euros a day are leaking from our emitting markets into Croatia, a country outside of Schengen and the Eurozone, and some people like it less and less. So far, Croatia has been talking about what will happen with Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, then it was proverbially screwed by the Dutch, and now the Italians, among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, are back in the picture again, who are introducing mandatory testing for everyone who arrives from Croatia.

A Slovenian Government spokesman is once again threatening to put Croatia on the country's red list. Although officially such decisions are made based on the assessments of epidemiological experts who don't want to endanger the health of their own people or the sustainability of their own health system, it's difficult to believe these arguments when looking at the figures. The Netherlands went the furthest in this regard, declaring Croatia a risky country almost four weeks ago, with the recommendation that all those arriving from Croatia be placed in self-isolation for two weeks upon their arrival in the Netherlands. They decided to make that move even though other European countries with a significantly higher number of infected per 100 thousand inhabitants, such as Spain and Great Britain, are on their list of countries safe for travel.

Looking at it in layman's terms, if we look at the total number of cases of coronavirus and the number of newly infected people, it's much easier for a Dutch person to become infected at home in the Netherlands while using public transport than in Porec on a campsite.

There have been very few infected tourists in Croatia

This fact along makes it difficult to shake off the impression that Croatia and indeed other nations are being judged by the mathematics of money, and not health. Namely, Croatia has about three million overnight stays a year from the Netherlands, and if half of those tourists came to us this summer, Croatia would gain and the Netherlands would lose about 100 million euros in revenue. These tourists are mostly passionate campers who will park their campers on the Dutch coast this summer, and the climate changes that have prolonged and warmed up the Dutch summer are helping them do just that. Spain isn't such a threat to them, because there are no flights, and they don't travel across the North Sea to Britain in the summer anyway.

The Italians kicked off Feragosto, and a good part of them headed for the Croatian part of the Adriatic, although there were still significantly less of them than there were last year. Italian tourism has suffered terribly this year, the spring season was completely devastated, and high hopes for revenue collection remains firmly on Italian tourists staying at home and spending their money in Italy. However, market analyses have shown that while more than two thirds of Italians plan to travel within the country in the coming months, and almost half of the respondents will shorten their travel plans when compared to the period before the coronavirus pandemic struck the enfeebled nation.

Still, every single little euro counts this season, and if the obligation to test on arrival from Croatia demotivates part of the Italian tourists to book accommodation in Croatia, then the Italian state goal has been achieved. At the same time, in the last ten days, 28 reports of infected tourists from four countries, Austria, Italy, Germany and Slovenia, have arrived through the European information system. When compared to the approximately 3.5 million tourists who visited Croatia by August the 10th, it does make one wonder just what the motives behind certain European countries have become. As for the so called European Union, perhaps its better to not take the name quite so literally.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 15th of August, 2020, the director of the ''Dr. Fran Mihaljevic'' Clinic for Infectious Diseases, Alemka Markotic, was a guest recently on RTL Danas (Today).

When asked whether she expects further growth in the number of people infected with the new coronavirus, after there were 208 of them reported across Croatia today, she said that it is possible that this number will grow in the coming days.

"It's possible that it will be a few more days of this, since whenever some hotspots start up, then we have a period of 6-7 to 10 days of increased numbers. It's possible that there will be even more increased numbers. But after that, people usually react to it and remember all those instructions, requests and warnings that we've been giving out for almost eight months now. Then they react to them and we end up with slightly smaller numbers. I sincerely hope that it will be the same this time as well,'' said Alemka Markotic.

When asked if we can expect a larger number of infected people from the families of young people who first became infected, Markotic said that it depends on where they were at the time when they were infected. "If they were somewhere without their family and were detected as infected upon their return, they will then have been placed in isolation and it's to be expected that most of their families will be saved from contracting the infection. However, those who have stayed with their families in the same premises, well, then there's a possibility that the infection will be transmitted,'' she said.

"The numbers aren't good, it isn't good that there are more people becoming infected. But at this point, it's good that the clinical picture in such people is very mild, that the transmission of the infection is thus, perhaps, less. However, we shouldn't rely on that, but I'd like to appeal to young people to be responsible and to understand, although they may have a milder form of the disease, they can infect some of their elders, those they love, and cause severe forms of the disease and even death. So, we all have to be responsible, regardless of age,'' she explained.

When asked whether this growth is partly a consequence of the decision to let more than a million tourists into Croatia without any special restrictions, she said that the season has been going on for more than a month and a half. "Of course, with increased migration, the chance of the number of sick and infected people coming increases. However, according to the official figures we have, there are still no significant infections and illnesses among tourists,'' she said.

She said that the same thing we do, their countries do, in the sense of tourists being tested. “They stay here for 7 to 10 days or two weeks. And they don't have to be tested here. For one part it was proven that they arrived here sick or infected, and one part certainly contracted the infection here in Croatia. Then, when they get to their countries, if they develop a clinical form of the disease, they'll be tested,'' she said.

"What's going now is that there are a large number of younger people on vacation on the coast and in different places where they gather, even in the open, and there's not too much distance. Younger people are freer, relax easier and faster, and think less about the consequences. This is the result of such behaviour, whether they're from here or not. The increase in the number of infected people is going on in all European countries and it's the result of both vacations and more travel. Travel is always a risk, we have a whole branch of travel called travel medicine where coronavirus is now the most frequent infection. But you can also come into contact with a lot of other infectious diseases on your travels,'' she said.

Asked what she intends to do in autumn if the situation worsens, she said no country could withstand another closure.

"There was never a complete closure, but an attempt was made to solve the hotspots with gradual measures. We know much, much more about this virus now. We'll try to follow everything we've learned when autumn comes and try to follow the situation as it goes and expect people to behave much more responsibly when they're indoors, when they're not on vacation and when they are at their jobs and among their families. And with that, as we've managed all these months, we'll manage to keep, in essence, a very good situation. Croatia is still very good in terms of its epidemiological situation,'' she said, adding that there should be no complete closure, but it could occur where the hotspots appear.

She also answered a question about the European Commission, which negotiated the purchase of 400 million doses of the vaccine.

"We can expect the vaccine in Croatia at the same time as other European countries can. It is unlikely that any of these licensed vaccines will be available before mid or late spring. When all European countries will be able to get it, Croatia will also be able to,'' concluded Alemka Markotic.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 15th of August, 2020, RTL reporter Jelena Tesija talked with the Minister of Health, Vili Beros, about the record number of newly infected people and the huge challenges that await the health care system.

We recently had the worst day since the beginning of the epidemic. Did you expect such figures?

Today we have 208 infected people. The tourist season is in full swing, 830 thousand tourists are in our country and an increase in the number was to be expected. It isn't possible to predict exactly how much it would rise and what it would be. However, it is important to note that in some counties, such as Split-Dalmatia County and in the City of Zagreb, the number of new cases is significantly higher. But we have four counties with only one new patient, we have 14 counties in which there are less than 10 new patients. The most important thing is that everything is under control, that we know the source of the infection and that our epidemiological profession is working out in the field. It's necessary to constantly emphasise that we ourselves, with our caution and effort, can contribute to reducing the spread of the infection. That's what is important to say at this point.

Did we open up again too much and too soon?

I don't think so. We made this decision fully consciously. We've made life and tourism possible. Without tourism, which is one of the more important branches of our economy, everything would be far worse than it is now. We've purposefully accepted this risk. We're still of the opinion that it is controllable. I spoke this morning with my Slovenian and Austrian colleagues, in a way we're all on the same track. What was, and that is the tourist season, is now coming to an end and we need to turn to autumn, turn to the beginning of the new school year and think about what's needed.

More and more countries are putting Croatia on the red list, are we still too late with the introduction of some measures?

I wouldn't say so. As you yourself have witnessed from the beginning of this threat, we've always started with a certain supervision, and then with a gradual tightening of those measures. So far, this has always yielded certain results. As important as the measures are, the responsible behavior of all of us together is equally important. With minimal personal effort, meaning wearing a mask when recommended, maintaining distance, personal hygiene, and avoiding handshakes, we can do the most to prevent the spread of this infection. That's why it's very important that we detected certain foci, and these were nightclubs at this time, where the application of this mode of behaviour could have prevented the spread of the infection. I'm sorry that didn't happen. However, we must therefore continue to repeat and appeal, especially to young people, to adhere to these measures.

What will Croatia look like in the coming days? Doctors are already saying they have too much work on their hands, can the healthcare system cope with what awaits us?

Thank you for your concern. However, the fact is that today there are only seven newly hospitalised people in Croatia, there's only one patient on a respirator. This, however, shows that the clinical picture is much milder due to certain circumstances and of course that doctors, especially epidemiologists, are burdened. But we're not thinking about any greater threat or burden on the health system at this moment in time. But we need to be thoughtful and prepared so we have some plans in place for September, especially for autumn, when we expect a different clinical picture and we have to be, as we were in March and April, ready for that.

What does it mean we have to be prepared? Will we have to mobilise the Zagreb Arena again, or will it not come to that?

We’re not going to talk about that now, you know I don’t like to get too ahead of myself. However, even now there are some capacities that are being preserved if needed. But we will do whatever is necessary at the given time and in accordance with the epidemiological situation.

Are you on vacation, you're in Jelsa, when will you return to work?

I'm an envoy of the Prime Minister on the day that is celebrated in the municipality of Jelsa. So, I'm officially here. But there's no rest. This morning I spoke with my Austrian and Slovenian counterparts, with the Deputy Prime Minister several times, with the Prime Minister as well. As long as the situation is like this and as long as the virus is active, there is no rest.

Is there a fear that the situation could spiral out of our control?

No. Not at this point.

What would you advise citizens? You've already mentioned wearing a mask, keeping a distance, is there perhaps anything else that citizens should be warned about?

No. But what really needs to be emphasised is that with minimal personal effort, we can do a lot for both the economy and the preservation of health and jobs in Croatia. Therefore, wearing a mask where necessary and recommended, maintaining a distance, personal hygiene, and avoiding shaking hands is absolutely a recipe for combating this infection.

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The coronavirus pandemic has dragged Croatian tourism to its knees. Despite some surprisingly good tourists figures so far, especially in comparison to the dire predictions from before, there are still some being left behind. Komiza on the beautiful island of Vis hopes for a decent tourist season despite all of the many obstacles.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 15th of August, 2020, the SDP mayor of Komiza, Tonka Ivcevic, explained that the argument for spending a holiday on this remote Croatian island is the isolation and the fact that no one, all these months, has been infected with the new coronavirus on it.

"We have very big announcements for both August and September. We're sure that we might have a tourist season at the level of last year's if there are no cancellations,'' explained Komiza's mayor.

She is conditional in her expression, however, as she is more than aware of what has been happening with the epidemic throughout Croatia over recent days, especially in Dalmatia, and it is no coincidence that at that same time, Austria changed its stance, asking Austrian citizens not to travel to Croatia.

"I'd agree that some decisions taken by the National Civil Protection Headquarters were delayed, because this doesn't create a good image for our county, and it could lead to cancellations." However, at least as far as she knows, there have been no major cancellations for Komiza so far.

"Komiza has become a hit destination this season. Vis is seen by people as a more isolated place, as an island where you have a place to get lost… You can stay all over the island, in many family farms, in many taverns,'' she added when in conversation with N1.

The advantage of not only Komiza but Vis as a whole is the fact that the island doesn't have a large capacity, there are only about 4000 beds, which, together with the guests, means a relatively low number of inhabitants in a relatively large area.

"If we add up the boaters, there are currently about 4,000 guests on the island. We don't have any bigger clubs, we don't have any bigger indoor spaces for guests. People have a place to get lost, we hope to remain a coronavirus-free destination,'' Komiza's mayor concluded.

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ZAGREB, Aug 15, 2020 - In his sermon in the Marian shrine of Marija Bistrica, held on Saturday on the occasion of the Feast of the Assumption, Zagreb Archbishop Josip Bozanic said that the family was the institution that had borne the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Brothers and sisters, as I look at you here, I can see that families prevail. We can say that the family is the institution that has borne the brunt of the crisis in recent months and that it has saved us. When everything stopped, the family remained," Bozanic told the faithful who gathered in Marija Bistrica for the central, open-air mass on the occasion of the Feast of the Assumption.

"It is interesting that at a time when attempts are being made to devalue family as an institution, we are again returning to that basic unit of human society. The family saves us," said the dignitary, among other things.