BELGRADE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th July, 2020) North Macedonia and the Western Balkans are witnessing a new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's Health Minister Venko Filipche said on Monday, adding that the infection rate did not drop during the summer season.
Filipche reported 78 new COVID-19 cases during Monday's daily briefing, bringing North Macedonia's total to 7,124. The death toll rose by five to 346 people in the past 24 hours.
"The World Health Organization [WHO] reported that 60 percent of the cases among 10 million COVID-19 patients worldwide were reported in June alone. This confirms that there is a new wave everywhere, and it came to us [the Balkans] earlier, and we registered it quite early," the health minister said.
He added that the current global epidemiological situation showed that the forecasts of the pandemic disappearing this summer were wrong.
With a death toll of over 340, North Macedonia leads the fatalities count in the region. At the same time, the country's authorities opened international airports in the capital city of Skopje and Ohrid resort city on Wednesday.
All other countries in the Western Balkans have also reported a spike in coronavirus cases in recent weeks. According to the WHO office in Serbia's Belgrade, this can be explained by the easing of restrictive measures and their non-compliance by citizens.
