Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce tried to dismiss his own responsibility for the high number of healthcare workers who contracted the coronavirus by accusing them of being infected outside of the workplace.

There are almost no infections in the dedicated Covid-19 teams, who have worked with these patients from the start and who have followed the protocols to the letter. A huge percentage of the infected workers were infected outside of the workplace, Filipce insisted.

This is not the first time that the Government has blamed the doctors and nurses for the dismal handling of the epidemic, where Macedonia has by far the highest rates of infections and mortality rate in the entire region. Doctor Zarko Karadzovski, who heads the Infectious Diseases Committee, claimed that some of the healthcare professionals can’t use the provided equipment properly.

Macedonia is in the middle of a huge Second Wave of the virus, with death and infection rates surpassing what was the presumed peak in mid April.