Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic, who heads the national Covid-19 task force, said on Monday evening that the lower coronavirus numbers showed that the measures taken to beat the pandemic had 'yielded results.'

Bozinovic told state television HRT that the the national crisis management team had analyzed the developments on a daily basis so as to overcome this situation with as few consequences as possible for the health of citizens.

Considering the Covid restrictions, he recalled that currently Croatia and Estonia are the two European countries with the most liberal measures, and underscored that for instance, some other countries had imposed curfews, ban on non-essential travel and so on.

He reiterated that the protection of the public health was a priority, and that the relaxation of the measures would be conducted in line with the recommendations made by epidemiologists.

The minister said that the education was an important segment and added that the fact that 150,000 upper elementary school students went back to classrooms should be the top news.

“This should be the breaking news, and after that all non-essential things for the society can come,” Bozinovic said in his comment to the announced protests of disgruntled restaurateurs and bar owners over the extended ban on their businesses.

“Of course, they live off their businesses, and we are trying to keep the situation under control to enable them to restart business activities as soon as possible.”

He went on to say that it was not possible to allow opening of all the business simultaneously and explained that the prudent relaxation can help hospitality businesses to operate at a profit later.

Bozinovic said that to date, the government had disbursed 9 billion kuna (€1.2 billion) to help the enterprise sector to offset the repercussions of the pandemic.