Around 50 pensioners from a nursing home in Croatia's second city of Split were hastily evacuated to the local hospital on Tuesday evening after ten people there had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

The head of the nursing home, Ivan Skaricic, said that about 15 patrons had complained about a fever in recent days, and that tests for the coronavirus made two days earlier had shown that ten people at the nursing home are infected.

The employees of the nursing home who were in contact with the infected pensioners were sent into self-isolation at home, while all 50 patrons have been transferred to KBC Split, the city’s major hospital.

It is still unclear how the infection spread inside the nursing home as all outside visits have been banned for some time now due to the epidemic.

It is believed that some of the pensioners may have contracted the disease while going to their regular hospital checkups, which haven’t been suspended.