The Mayor of Belgrade Zoran Radojcic declared the emergency situation in the capital as of Friday with stricter measures in trying to curb an outbreak in coronavirus epidemic, N1 reported.

The measures include the ban on more than 100 people in closed space with mandatory face masks and physical distance and not more than 500 outdoor.

The night clubs will be closed from 11 pm to 6 am, while people without face masks in public transport will be sanctioned.

Radojicic told the state RTS TV it was not necessary to quarantine Belgrade due to the current epidemic situation.

Earlier, Serbia's chief epidemiologist Predrag Kon, a member of Serbia's anti-epidemic Crisis Team, said the coronavirus infection was at its peak in Serbia and that the intensity if virus transmission was the greatest since the start of the pandemic, the FoNet news agency reported.

He predicted that the number of newly infected would decrease later, and added the situation was not worse than in March and April, “but that it was not simple.””We must behave as we are facing the most intensive period of infection, and we will solve this in a couple of weeks,” Kon told the state RTS TV.

He said the Government would adopt new stricter measures for the next 14 days, including mandatory face masks in closed space, and that those who violated that would be sanctioned.”If those measures are implemented, a new increase in the number of infected is nearly theoretical.”

Kon added that it was not possible to predict such a new explosion of the novel virus since it was believed it would weaken due to warmer weather.

On Thursday, Serbia reported six deaths and 359 tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The Health Ministry bulletin said 9,013 people had been tested over the previous 24 hours. The total number of people tested to Thursday stood at 418,879 with 15,195 confirmed cases.

It added there were 1,996 active cases, including 81 patients on ventilators.

The total number of deaths since March 6, when the epidemic was officially declared, was 287.

Serbia's authorities relaxed all the measures after lifting the state of emergency on May 6, ahead of the June 21 general elections.

They mostly blame people for disobeying recommendations to wear a face mask and keep a physical distance.