Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce warned that the prognosis for the respirator patients is dire. There are currently 67 patients at the Infectious Diseases Clinic in Skopje – six of them on respirators. “Latest studies show that 90 percent of the patients that end up on assisted ventilation have a fatal outcome”, Filipce warned.

Filipce also said that the coronavirus epidemic was preceded by a near doubling of cases of the seasonal flu, and that some of those patients possibly had the Covid-19 virus.

Filipce told Telma TV that while Macedonia normally has 20.000 flu cases each year, this year there were 37.000 reported cases. At times, in January and February schools operated at quarter capacity, because of all the sick children.

Their materials were tested for other causes of the seasonal flu, but now we can test to see if some of those patients had the coronavirus, Filipce said.