The Covid-19 response team of Novalja, a town on the island of Pag, and local tourism officials have dismissed recent media reports about at least 94 Austrians getting infected with coronavirus at a local festival, adding that 12 positive cases were in quarantine in Novalja and none were from Austria.

“Novalja is a safe Covid-19 destination, we are protecting it with mass-scale testing and there are several arguments that prove the media reports false,” the head of the local coronavirus response team, Ivan Peranic said, adding that 12 visitors were currently in quarantine and that they were nationals of Italy, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Peranic told state agency Hina that the health authorities of some Austrian federal states had reportedly linked 94 cases of infection to Novalja, that is, the “Austria goes Zrce” festival, held on Novalja’s Zrce beach on July 17-24.

He “strongly dismissed” reports that 19,000 Austrians had attended the festival and that a large number of them got infected there, Hina said.

Hina did not say which media had reported about the alleged infections at Novalja.

Peranic noted that in the week from July 17 to 24, 12,151 tests were conducted and that 16 positive cases were identified, none of which were from Austria.

Novalja Tourism Board head Marina Sciran-Rizner said that the maximum daily number of Austrian visitors during the festival week was 3,800 or up to 5,000 throughout the week.

“At the peak of the festival, on 22 July, there were 3,800 guests from Austria,” she said, citing data from the eVisitor information system for the registration of tourists, estimating that of the total number of Austrian visitors, up to 2,500 attended the local festival.