“Croatia at the moment on all of the measures that go into the stringency index, ranks the strictest on our scale,” commented Toby Phillips, Head of Digital Research at Oxford University.

Acting swiftly and decisively in the fight to combat the spread of coronavirus has seen Croatia as the leading country in the world in terms of measures introduced according to a new study from Oxford University. Criteria such as travel bans, school closures, public assembly bans and company bans are reviewed and compared to the number of people currently infected. Countries that responded immediately after the catastrophe in Italy, with a relatively small number of cases, found themselves at the top of the scale. And other studies from around the world have also backed this up.

Almost immediately after the COVID-19 the Croatian government handed over control to the Civil Protection Directorate, an organisation formed of experts in dealing with such extraordinary situations, therefore completely bypassing any political influence.

"At this point, Croatia has taken all measures that fall under the strictest of our rankings. When we have taken them all into account, Croatia has collected 100 points on our scale. There are a couple of other countries that are close to this: India is somewhere, South Africa is in a similar position, but definitely when we look at all the measures we are looking at, Croatia is one of the most stringent countries when it comes to COVID-19 virus protection,” added Phillips in an interview for RTL Direkt.

In fact, just yesterday Croatia saw the lowest 24-hour increase in cases of infected people since the COVID-19 outbreak began. Croatia's health authorities reported forty new cases of Covid-19 on Monday afternoon, bringing the country's total count to date to 1,222. The 3.4 percent increase from Sunday marks the country's lowest 24-hour increase in cases since the outbreak began in February.

Oxford University stated that the idea is to offer transparent insights into everything the world governments are doing to counter the coronavirus challenge, and keep the data up to date as often as possible.