Crisis HQ decides: Up to 5 people can gather, indoor cafes and restaurants reopen, strict control

A decision was made during a meeting of the Crisis HQ that starting on Friday, indoor hospitality establishments can reopen and stay open until 10 pm, with 50 percent capacity, and without music.

"Today we made a very clear decision to let indoor cafes and restaurants reopen, but while respecting all the measures - with only 50 percent capacity, up to five people together, while keeping the distance of 1.5 to 2 meters. There will be no music, whether  live or not, because music gets loud and people tend to shout to be heard, which helps spread the virus. The control will be strict. We will have everything else that could be the subject of consideration on the agenda of next week's meeting," Dr. Branislav Tiodorovic said after the session on Thursday afternoon.

He added that the meeting was short, but useful, with "a clear conclusion that we are aware of the real situation and must be aware of it in the future as well."

"We had a wonderful five or six days of holidays and, I hope, we used them in the best possible way. We must be aware that the measures were probably not respected as much as expected. The healthcare system is ready to expect newly confirmed cases in seven to 10 days, but not the way it was for Sretenje (mid-February), but to a much lesser extent. We expect the weekend and the first two days after it to pass, so that we can see the real situation. We all want to be calmer, to reduce the number of cases. We still have a high number of those who are dying. That should be significantly reduced," he added.

He said that "the virus is here, in our midst, it is present and we are not done with it."

Dr. Tiodorovic stressed that "we must slowly, carefully and gradually relax the measures" based on realistic data about the number of patients and fatal outcomes.

"Everything we do will be based on data from the health system. I believe that we will have concrete moves regarding that in 15 to 20 days. Nightclubs got us into big trouble last year. I believe they are ready to prepare for reopening. We'll wait a bit, we have to evaluate. When we are sure that we have, for example, less than 100 new cases per day, we can let everything function normally. If we achieve 60 percent collective immunity, we can expect to live nice and normal lives," explained Tiodorovic.

The Crisis HQ decided to take this step because coronavirus numbers are falling, there even hadbeen below 1,000 new daily cases two days ago.

Epidemiologist Dr. Predrag Kon told RTS earlier that organization of weddings and mass gatherings in Serbia, which was announced to resume at the beginning of the summer, will depend on the creation of collective immunity that is the only thing that could protect us all, and that it is difficult to talk about that now.

When it comes to the already announced reopening of cafes, Kon said that he could not prejudge the decisions of the Crisis HQ, but said that reopening will certainly happen.

(Telegraf.rs)