Doctor Aspazija Sofijanova, who heads the Children’s Clinic in Skopje, warned that the current strain of the coronavirus is attacking children at a much greater degree than the previous strains.

We need to focus on the children now. We reorganized and our third floor and some of the fourth floor is now a Covid ward. We treat 21 children, with their parents, each in individual rooms. The youngest is just a month and half old. The mother was positive and we tested the child, Sofijanova said.

She said that, for example, of 12 children tested last night, her team decided to hospitalize four. “This is likely due to the British strain. We didn’t have the same rate of spread previously”, she added.