Croatia shortens COVID-19 isolation to 10 days

The Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ) on Monday decided to shorten the isolation of asymptomatic COVID-19 patients from 14 days to 10 days.

The isolation of patients with mild or moderate clinical manifestations is shortened if the patient does not have a fever for at least 24 hours and if other symptoms are significantly improved.

Patients with severe symptoms will have to isolate for a minimum of 20 days, which can be reduced to a minimum of 15 days with two negative COVID-19 tests.

HZJZ Director Krunoslav Capak explained to N1 Television that

an infected person’s infectiousness drops significantly after seven days, and after 10 days the person is not contagious.

An amendment was also adopted according to which persons who had laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 disease three months ago do not need further testing if they do not have clear symptoms of the disease.

There had been 70 new recorded COVID-19 cases in Croatia in the last 24 hours as of Monday morning. Capak told N1 television that

it was not an objective number as fewer tests were conducted over the weekend and that the number of new cases would be higher on Tuesday.

He noted that there had been a downward trend in new cases in the last two weeks and that he hoped this trend would continue.

The outbreak was temporarily put under control in May after the government implemented strict restrictions.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic started to resurge in June as the tourist season began.

Croatia registered its first COVID-19 infection on Feb. 25. Nearly 15,000 people have been infected since then, while 253 patients have succumbed to the disease, according to the HZJZ.