ZAGREB, Nov 19, 2020 - The City of Zagreb is launching a massive antigen coronavirus testing campaign on Monday November 23, the city administration announced on Thursday following a surge in daily infections.

The authorities have ensured 50,000 rapid tests which produce results within 15 minutes.

Four stages of project

The project will be carried out in four stages.

The first stage will cover the testing of chronic patients, elderly and infirm people in their homes, the second stage will focus on residents of city- and privately-owned nursing homes, the third stage will cover health workers and the fourth stage all other people.

Tests will be carried out at 12 sites in the city and appointments are made via an online application form, Mayor Milan Bandic said at a press conference. He said that more tests would be provided, depending on the public interest. 

The authorities said that the increase in the number of people with serious forms of the disease and the growing hospitalisation numbers and people on ventilators showed the need for systematic testing, especially of vulnerable groups.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in late February, 361 residents of Zagreb have died, 22,080 have tested positive, and 3,272 are currently active, the head of the municipal health department, Vjekoslav Jelac, said.

ZAGREB, Nov 19, 2020 - Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said on Thursday a decision on new anti-coronavirus measures would be adopted this week and that they would restrict the number of people allowed to gather and the business hours of bars and restaurants as well as concern work from home and in shifts.

"The fact is that the numbers are rising and this week we had a weekly increase of about 10%. Last Sunday we said that it is not enough to stabilise growth rates but make sure that the number of new infections starts falling," he told the press after a cabinet meeting.

As for gatherings, Bozinovic said even a gathering of ten could be a problem if infected persons came and did not comply with the measures.

The point of everything is self-discipline, he said, adding that family gatherings and festivities were the best medium for the virus to spread.

He went on to say that according to preliminary reports, yesterday's remembrance procession for war victims in Vukovar was conducted professionally and correctly. He saw that some participants did not wear masks, but said that they did take them at the envisaged points.

Bozinovic said the measures and the messages in Vukovar yesterday had been conceived well and that the result was disproportionately fewer walkers than in the past. "Anything else in terms of bans and law enforcement would have sent the wrong picture, which was the furthest thing from our minds."

As for an unannounced procession in Split which involving hundreds of football fans last night, he said "that's certainly not good." He said he hoped there would be no consequences and that the police took action in line with protection of the peace.

ZAGREB, Nov 19, 2020 - In the past 24 hours 3,164 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Croatia and 49 COVID patients have died, the national COVID response team said on Thursday.

There are 17,814 active cases at the moment, including 1,944 patients in hospital, of 204 are on ventilators, and 39,389 persons are self-isolating.

Croatia has confirmed 93,879 coronavirus infections to date, 1,200 deaths and 74,865 recoveries, including 2,192 in the past 24 hours.

To date 649,551 persons have been tested for the novel virus, including 8,770 in the past 24 hours.

ZAGREB, Nov 19, 2020 - The number of coronavirus-related hospitalisations in Croatia has doubled this month and the number of patients on ventilators has continued to grow, Tomislav Dulibic, state secretary at the Ministry of Health, reported at a cabinet meeting on Thursday.

Dulibic said that 1,877 infected persons were treated in hospitals on Wednesday, including 205 who were on ventilators, while over the last week 1,596 COVID patients had been admitted to hospitals and 1,086 had been discharged.

He warned that the current percentage of newly-infected persons, not coming from self-isolation, stood at a high 80 percent.

"This means that the vast majority of positive people moved around freely and spread the infection without suspecting that they had been in contact with an infected person," Dulibic said.

He noted that the coronavirus death rate was several times higher than the death rate for the seasonal flu, adding that the infection could cause long-term diseases even in young and healthy persons.

A record 3,251 new coronavirus cases were confirmed in Croatia on Wednesday and 38 people had died since Tuesday.

ZAGREB, Nov 19, 2020 - Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic, who heads the national COVID-19 response team, said on Thursday that additional epidemiological measures would be imposed at national level if the number of daily coronavirus infections continued to grow.

"As we have announced, if the numbers continue to grow this week, we have to do all we can to maintain the functioning of the heatlhcare and hospital system," Bozinovic said at a cabinet meeting.

Over the past week, the national COVID-19 response team has ordered additional epidemiological measures for 10 counties, which now have tighter restrictions than those at national level.

In the last week inspectors inspected over 17,800 businesses, hospitality establishments, clubs and public gatherings issuing 723 warnings and 20 infringement warrants in the total amount of HRK 600,000 (€80,000), Bozinovic said.

ZAGREB, Nov 19, 2020 - Croatian Health Minister Vili Beros has tested positive for coronavirus, the Health Ministry announced in a statement on Thursday morning.

The minister is in stable condition with mild symptoms and will continue to perform his duties in isolation, adhering to all epidemiological measures, the statement said.

ZAGREB, November 18, 2020 - Over the past 24 hours, Croatia has registered a record number of 3,251 new cases of the coronavirus infection, and there have been 38 related deaths, the national COVID-19 crisis management team said on Wednesday.

The number of active cases in Croatia stands at 16,891, there are 1,878 COVID patients in hospitals, and 205 of them are on ventilators.

Since February 25, when Croatia registered its first case, a total of 90,715 people have contracted coronavirus, 1,151 of them have died, while 72,673 have recovered, incuding 1,693 in the last 24 hours.

There are currently 39,937 people in self-isolation.

To date, 640,781 people have been tested for coronavirus, including 9,126 in the last 24 hours.

November the 18th, 2020 - With the excellent news surrounding the new coronavirus vaccine which is now in its final stages, just how many Croatian citizens would be willing to vaccinate themselves against the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2? A new survey has revealed some interesting responses and figures.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, of those asked, thirteen percent of respondents have stated that they will definitely get vaccinated against the new virus which took the world by storm this year, while thirty percent stated that they are likely to do so. However, as many as 36 percent of respondents are unlikely to be vaccinated while 21 percent have claimed that they certainly will not obtain the new coronavirus vaccine for themselves.

Those who do agree to the vaccine would be vaccinated out of responsibility to others, as well as because that would suppress the infection itself, giving the virus less healthy people to infect and as such slow it down. Some of them would vaccinate against SARS-CoV-2 as a precaution, and some of them would do so out of not wanting to infect the elderly, those with underlying conditions and complications or members of their families.

A quarter of the respondents will be vaccinated because they are older and because it is a recommendation of the profession for them to protect themselves in such a manner.

Those who would not get vaccinated have claimed they'd avoid it because they don't believe in the new coronavirus vaccine, and some people are afraid of potential side effects. One in three people who oppose the vaccine believe that the vaccines are generally unsafe and have unwelcome health consequences.

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ZAGREB, Nov 17, 2020 - Over the past 24 hours, Croatia has registered 1,945 new cases of coronavirus infection and there have been 31 related deaths, the national COVID-19 response team said on Tuesday.

The number of active cases stands at 15,371. There are 1,827 COVID patients in hospitals, of whom 196 are on ventilators.

Since February 25, when Croatia registered its first case of the infection, a total of 87,464 people have contracted the novel coronavirus, 1,113 of whom have died.

A total of 70,980 persons have recovered, including 2,242 in the last 24 hours.

There are currently 36,175 people in self-isolation.

To date, 631,655 people have been tested for coronavirus, including 7,262 in the last 24 hours.

November 16, 2020 - When the global COVID-19 pandemic reached Croatia, one of the things everyone wanted to know was: how many medical ventilators are there in Croatia to help those suffering from the worst damage to their lungs?

Several months later, one thing remains almost exactly the same: it’s almost impossible to tell what the exact answer to that question is. Unofficially, the number that has been floated around by many, including the Croatian President Zoran Milanović is that there are around 800 ventilators in Croatia. Back in March and April, I tried finding some confirmation for the number being thrown around, and the most official sources back then kept repeating the mantra “the information is not made public because of the security precautions, there are enough ventilators in Croatia, and they will be distributed as needed”. One other thing often mentioned by any official source was that Croatia was planning to procure more ventilators, to make sure we had enough if the second wave hit. A long time ago, way before this current pandemic, Croatia was ranked quite high in terms of the number of critical care beds, corrected for the population. The scientific paper published in intensive care Medicine scientific journal had Croatia on the seventh place in that metric in Europe. 

Well, the second wave did, in fact, hit and now it seems that the number of ventilators in Croatia might again be the question worth asking. And, recently, a report by the RTL seems to give a definitive answer:  there are 867 ventilators in Croatia. The report also provides the distribution of the ventilators within the Croatian hospitals, divided into stationary and mobile ventilators. At the same time, the article itself mentions the number of 1,168 ventilators, without even trying to address the discrepancy between the two figures! The report does not say anything about how they got their numbers, so it’s almost impossible to fact-check them. They do, however, acknowledge that the officials have said that the ventilators will be sent to where they will be needed the most, depending on what’s going on at any given moment with the epidemic in Croatia. And it would appear that no major procurement of additional resources took place during the summer in preparation for the second-wave (we knew was coming). 

Today, as I’m writing this article, there are around 16,000 active cases of COVID-19 in Croatia, with 191 patients on the ventilator. And while we might not know exactly how many ventilators there are in Croatia or where they are, for now, we can be certain that there are enough ventilators in Croatia for the current extent of the epidemic. It's important to keep in mind that it's impossible for all of those ventilators to be used to help COVID patients, as a ventilator is often needed for any type of major surgery, and there are still patients having medical emergencies and having surgery, COVID notwithstanding. At the same time, that doesn’t give us a free pass to behave irresponsibly, as each and every one of us and our behaviour is the key factor in how bad the epidemic is going to get, and how many people will end up needing the ventilator to survive.

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