Six doctors' associations on Wednesday called on the government to urgently introduce more stringent epidemiological measures, otherwise the health system could cave in, seeing that hospitals in Croatia's interior are already at the "breaking point."

If the government does not immediately adopt a plan for stricter measures and the current increase in people requiring hospitalisation continues, in 30 days’ time hospitals will not be in a position to successfully treat Covid-19 patients or other citizens, for example, anyone who experiences a stroke or heart attack or road accident, the doctors’ associations said in a letter to the government.

“Without stricter measures introduced now, by the end of November we will be compelled to make decisions like which patient stands a chance to survive and which does not. There will not be sufficient beds or ventilators or sufficient medical staff. Our calling is to treat people and not decide who has the right to live,” they warned.

“An overburdened hospital system will certainly result in primary health care caving in, and already now it has an insufficient number of family doctors.”

Some hospitals in Croatia’s interior have already reached breaking point as the number of hospitalised patients and those on ventilators more than tripled in October.

“The number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals had at the start of October already increased from 286 to 1,097 patients and the number of patients on ventilators jumped from 26 to 81. In the past few days every second person tested in Zagreb was coronavirus positive and only a quarter of newly infected people go into self-isolation. Unfortunately, we have to clearly state that the system of testing and contact tracing is no longer successfully fulfilling its role in curbing the epidemic.”

The associations called on the government to urgently organise an effective contact tracing system by using call centres and to significantly increase the number of tests.