Presenting new anti-COVID restrictions on Thursday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said the government was against a full lockdown and a curfew, and that it was considering fining citizens who do not comply with the restrictions and extending the school holidays by a week.
“Our aim is to protect health and restrict certain activities which we believe, if we all comply with the measures, will help to reduce the infection dynamic and consequently the number of patients, hospitalisations and deaths,” Plenkovic told the press.
Talks on helping affected sectors
COVID-19 is changing our lives and individual responsibility is measured by solidarity towards others. Additional measures are being introduced because we are at the stage when that is imperative, and we will see to it that we make it economically and financially through the weeks ahead, he said.
Ministers whose departments are related to the economy will meet with employers’ associations and business representatives on Friday for talks on how to make it easier for the sectors affected by the latest restrictions.
In order to help the private sector as it did during the spring lockdown, the government will give employers HRK 4,000 per employee for salaries, and additional measures for certain sectors will be on the agenda as well.
The prime minister would not say which number of daily infections would lead to a relaxation of the latest restrictions, saying the goal was to change the infection growth trend.
“As for the timing, we are adopting measures that are appropriate to the situation. The previous measures showed at the start that the intensity dropped, but we are still not at the stage where the trend is dropping. In the past few days the growth increased and these measures are aimed at turning towards reducing the infection dynamic.”
He said the best epidemiological measure would be to close everything, but added that this was not realistic and that the restrictions would be relaxed when the number of infections started dropping.
Education, labour, production and health are important
“As for maintaining as normal a social life as possible… we’ve had a much more normal life than many other European countries. Education, labour and production are important to me, with the goal to protect people’s health,” Plenkovic said.
“Any social contact – this means going to dinner with someone, being at a party, in a bar, a disco or elsewhere – is an irrelevant luxury at the moment. For people’s health, the luxury of any social contact that is not necessary is unimportant. Anything you can avoid which isn’t imperative, isn’t work and isn’t education, is unimportant at the moment.”
The recommendation for universities is to switch to online education, while for secondary schools, it is up to headmasters and founders to decide whether to switch.
The education minister is proposing, in cooperation with the Croatian Institute of Public Health, that the school holidays from Christmas to Epiphany be extended for another week.
Fines being considered for citizens who flout restrictions
Plenkovic said the government was considering fining citizens who flouted restrictions but that this was a measure they would “unwillingly take.”
“The fight against COVID-19 is based on trust, solidarity and understanding the specificities of fighting a virus which passes from person to person through contact, a very tough opponent. As a government, we won’t be happy if we have to take measures which will penalise citizens because we trust our people.”
