All schools and universities in Croatia will close down for a period of 14 days, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic announced in a dramatic announcement on Friday, adding that Croatia is "at war" against the coronavirus outbreak.

“The entire world, Europe, and Croatia, are all practically in a state of war against the virus, against panic, and against negative social and economic impact of this pandemic,” Plenkovic said in a news conference after a cabinet meeting.

The closures will effectively keep at home all of Croatia’s 460,000 elementary and middle school students aged about 6-18, in addition to some 160,000 university students. Kindergartens would be closed as well.

For younger pupils aged 6-10, video lessons would be aired daily on state television HRT, while for older students online courses would be set up. School buildings would still stay open to parents who can’t afford to stay at home with their kids, so they can drop them off to watch televised lessons in classrooms.

Finance Minister, Zdravko Maric, told reporters that the government prepared a set of tax relief measures intended to help businesses and companies affected by restrictions imposed because of the pandemic. These will include postponing deadlines for income tax, profit tax, and salary contribution payments.

Case count rises, hospitals told to prepare beds

Later on Friday, health authorities updated Croatia’s case count to 32, including the first known minor, a kindergarten-aged child from Zagreb. City officials said that 119 other children and 16 employees of the kindergarten would be ordered to stay at home for two weeks.

Meanwhile, Health Minister, Vili Beros, sent a memo to all hospitals in the country ordering them to prepare “the maximum amount” of beds for isolation and intensive care units, and to suspend all vacations and business-related trips, effective immediately. The order also tells hospitals to cut down non-essential services like specialist care.

Government warned that there is no need for panic shopping after media reports showed empty shelves in a number of supermarkets across Zagreb. Finance Ministry data released on Friday showed a 58 percent year-on-year spike in the number of retail receipts issued in stores for the three-week period ending on March 12, with receipt value 11 percent up, totalling 469 million kuna (€62 million).

Economy Ministry issued a press release assuring Croatians that the country’s national reserves hold enough basic foodstuffs for the country to survive for 30 days.

These include wheat, corn, rice, pasta, meat, canned meat and fish, bottled drinking water, salt, sugar, oil, cheese, powdered milk, baby food, powdered eggs, jam, frozen and canned fruits, and are stockpiled in a number of warehouses around the country.

The national hotel association HUT, industry group of 14 largest hotel companies in the country, said that most hotels would close for the next two weeks, but added that at least one hotel in each major seaside town would remain open, along with a few in capital Zagreb.

Also on Friday, Irish low-cost airline Ryanair cancelled plans to establish a summertime regional hub in Croatia’s seaside city of Zadar, citing travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Slovenia’s caseload jumps 50 percent in a single day

In Slovenia, the reported case count jumped to 141 by early afternoon, up from 96 the day before, the country’s health ministry said. The country had earlier imposed strict controls on its border with Italy, closing all but six crossings.

Slovenia officially declared an epidemic earlier this week, giving health authorities more powers in efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus, and ordered closures of all schools, universities, and kindergartens across the country.

On Friday the government banned all cargo traffic which had been in Italy from transit through the country. The order allowed trucks already in Slovenia to leave the country using shortest routes possible, which caused a ten-hour holdup at the Bregana-Obrezje crossing with Croatia.

On Thursday night, Slovenia’s Health Minister, Ales Sabeder, had ordered a ban on all railway and bus traffic coming from Italy. Shipments of protective gear, medicines, humanitarian aid, and mail parcels are exempt, Slovenia’s state agency STA reported.

This is an ongoing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

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