Members of the national COVID-19 response team said on Monday that they were managing the crisis the best they could, and that once the pandemic finishes the government and the team would conduct an analysis of the adopted counter-COVID measures.

“In the past 14 days we have had a bad incidence rate, but the whole epidemic must be evaluated, from February 25, when Croatia registered its first case of the infection,” epidemiologist Krunoslav Capak said in response to the opposition calling for the government’s political accountability due to a large number of new COVID-19 infections and deaths.

Members of the national COVID-19 response team told the press conference that the measures in the whole world were similar and that their adoption in Croatia had depended on economic, social and psychological aspects.

“It will be decided in the end whether a particular measures was adopted on time,” Capak said.

He said that at one moment Croatia was the best, but for the past two weeks it had been the worst in Europe according to some criteria.

“We will draw a line under this at the end of the pandemic,” he said.

Health Minister Vili Beros said that it was not a problem for him to pay the price of “all of this”, adding that he would like to see which relevant scientific sources supported the accusations that the measures had been adopted too late.

“I am doing the best I can at this moment, and at one moment the Croatian people will assess my role and it is not a problem to bear the consequences if I did something wrong,” he said.

Asked about the political responsibility of the national COVID-19 response team, Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said that the team “has been fully focused for ten months on thinking daily about how to reduce the numbers”.

The head of Zagreb’s Dr Fran Mihaljevic hospital for infectious diseases, Alemka Markotic, said that she was working responsibly and that extensive expert analyses would be conducted to see which measures had been adequate.