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.