Slovenia continues to see Croatia as an epidemiologically safe country but its health minister has warned this could change if the rise in new Covid-19 patients of the past couple of days continues.

“I’m worried the situation in Croatia could deteriorate and that it could become an epidemiologically dangerous state regarding a new spread of the virus in Slovenia,” Tomaz Gantar told POP-TV on Monday.

“If there was an increase in infections in Slovenia and it was discovered that they were cases imported from Croatia, it would be immediately put on the red list of epidemiologically unsafe states,” the minister said, warning that in that case, Slovenian tourists returning home would have to be quarantined.

The Slovenian Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) said earlier in the day that despite the rise in new infections in the past few days, Croatia remained on the list of epidemiologically safe states.

To those states, from which passengers may enter Slovenia without being quarantined or producing a certificate that they are negative for Covid-19 not older than three days, the NIJZ applies strict but transparent criteria which Croatia meets, it said.

Epidemiologically safe states are those with less than ten new infections per 100,000 inhabitants over the past 14 days and 10,000 tests per million inhabitants in total.