Croatia opened its borders widely to tourists during the summer. Result: the country recorded this Wednesday the record daily number of contamination with the new coronavirus, the authorities announced.
The country of 4.2 million inhabitants, which in 2019 hosted nearly 20 million tourists, had faced the first months of the pandemic without imposing strict containment measures. For several months, Croatia counted less than 100 cases of contamination per day, to have almost no more by mid-May.
Rebound of the epidemic
But the trend changed after the border opened at the end of May for foreign tourists, especially Europeans. Thus, more than 200 daily cases of contamination have been identified in recent days, with a record of 358 cases on Wednesday. About a third of the new cases have been recorded on the coast. To date, more than 8,800 people have been infected in the country and 175 people have died from Covid-19.
In recent days, the UK and Germany have imposed a quarantine and other precautionary measures on their nationals returning from parts of Croatia. Italy, for its part, is imposing a coronavirus test on its nationals returning from vacation in Croatia.
No containment planned
The Croatian government said on Wednesday that it was still possible to manage the situation without imposing a curfew. "The only option not to impose full containment is to respect the rules and behave responsibly," said Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic, head of a crisis cell.
The government admits to taking the risk, with the aim of avoiding a complete failure of the tourist season, when the fall in income was estimated at 70%. “It was, let's be honest, a clear political objective of the Croatian government to ensure that the tourist season is as good as possible under these circumstances,” Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said last week. In July, two million tourists were registered in the country, about half as many as in July 2019.
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