CROvid-20: the Croatian Experience During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In mid-December of 2019, two decades after the SARS epidemic and less than a decade after the first outbreak of MERS, a pneumonia outbreak erupted in China, which spread during the next two months throughout the world, with over 6 million cases and more than 350,000 fatal outcomes by the end of May 2020. On February 25, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Zagreb, Croatia, and was linked to an outbreak in the Lombardy and Veneto regions of northern Italy. Although Croatia was struck by a major earthquake amidst the COVID-19 epidemic, the spread of the epidemic has not accelerated and the country still has one of the lowest COVID-19 rates in Europe.  A brief documentary filmed about the fight against COVID-19, before and after the earthquake which occurred on March 22, 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic in Croatia, will complement the lecture.