A Facebook group for teachers sent an open letter to Education Minister, Radovan Fuchs on Thursday, urging him to "expedite the testing of students and reduce waiting times for test results in order to contribute to curbing the spread of the coronavirus infection and reduce the need for online classes," state agency Hina said.

The group, called Teachers’ Room, which has about 20,000 members on Facebook, said that “over the last few weeks the epidemiological situation in schools has been deteriorating even though the ministry, in cooperation with the Public Health Institute, has done a lot to prevent schools from turning into infection hot spots.”

“Almost all schools in Croatia have switched to online classes after the autumn school break,” the group said, referring to a holiday break this week around 1 November, All Saints Day. “Even though we are talking about only a few days, we believe this can only be a short term solution,” they said in an unsigned letter.

They said that due to the increased pressure on the health services and the large number of people who are getting tested for Covid, students in some cases have to wait five or six days to get tested after exhibiting symptoms of the disease.

“Students then have to wait for test results for up to two days, and during that time all their close contacts in the classroom continue to attend in-person classes. Their contacts outside the school are also at risk during that time,” the group said, warning that “without self-isolation, the virus continues to spread.”

“This increases the likelihood of entire classes or even schools having to switch to online teaching,” they said, and called on Fuchs to “do his best” to “expedite testing for students and to reduce waiting times for Covid test results.”