February the 5th, 2022 - A new vaccine against the novel coronavirus, Nuvaxovid made by the American company Novavax, will be made available here in Croatia by the end of this month. 

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the fifth vaccine approved for use against the novel coronavirus, Nuvaxovid made by the American company Novavax, should arrive in Croatia by the end of February.

Prof. dr. sc. Mirjana Kujundzic Tiljak, the director of the Andrija Stampar School of Public Health at the Medical Faculty of the University of Zagreb, said on HTV on Thursday that this was a completely new vaccine.

''We know nothing about its effectiveness on new strains. We don't even know how long the protection will last. That's what is written in the official description of the medicine,'' said Kujundzic Tiljak as a guest of the Dobro jutro Hrvatska/Good morning Croatia show.

Given that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved Nuvaxovid back in December, as the first protein vaccine approved for use in the European Union, much is known about the vaccine itself. In addition to European Union countries, Israel has already ordered this new vaccine, ordering their first five million doses last week, even before the vaccine was officially approved in that country.

"This vaccine will be another alternative for those who cannot or don't want to receive the mRNA vaccines," the Israeli Health Ministry said. The same message was sent on Saturday by Irish Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, saying that Novavax's Nuvaxovid has proven ''highly effective'' in preventing moderate to severe clinical pictures of the disease. He therefore called on those few who haven't yet been vaccinated to do so when the first doses arrive in Ireland, as reported by tportal.

Back in September last year, based on an agreement between the European Commission and Novavax, Croatia ordered 198,000 doses of Nuvaxovid, and in early December, Dr. Dragan Primorac told RTL Direkt that the vaccine was ''extremely effective'' in relation to the new and rapidly spreading variant, Omicron.

Nuvaxovid is given in two doses three weeks apart. Unlike mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna), which use part of the novel coronavirus' genetic code, and vector vaccines (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson) which use a harmless, genetically modified virus to transmit part of the coronavirus' DNA, protein vaccines contain fragments of a protein unique to the novel coronavirus. These fragments are enough for the body to respond by creating a natural defense against infection, and Novavax also uses insect cells in vaccine production.

The technology of protein vaccines is not new, on the contrary - vaccines against pertussis and hepatitis B have been developed on the same principle. Such a vaccine does not have to be stored at low temperatures, which is especially important for developing countries.

The results of two main clinical trials with more than 45,000 subjects showed that Nuvaxovid vaccines are safe and effective in the prevention of covid in persons aged 18 years and older. The first study, conducted in Mexico and the United States, showed a 90.4 percent reduction in the number of symptomatic cases of infection in people who received Nuvaxovid, seven days after their second dose. A second clinical trial, conducted in the United Kingdom, showed a vaccine effectiveness of 89.7 percent. It should be noted that these studies were conducted on ''old'' variants of the novel coronavirus, before the emergence of Omicron, but Novavax has meanwhile reported that their vaccine also generates an immune response to the Omicron variant.

The most common side effects were mild to moderate and went away in a few days. They included pain and tenderness at the vaccine site, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, general weakness, joint pain, and nausea or vomiting.

Nuvaxovid is a protein vaccine with a laboratory-grown version of the spike protein present on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The vaccine also contains an ''adjuvant'', a substance that helps boost the immune response to the vaccine, HALMED said.

When the vaccine is given, a person's immune system will identify the protein as foreign and will create a natural defense against it, ie antibodies and T-cells. In case of genuine coronavirus infection, the immune system will then quickly recognise the spike protein on the virus as being the same and be ready to attack it. Antibodies and immune cells work together to kill the virus, prevent it from entering the body's cells, and destroy those already infected cells, helping to protect against full coronavirus infection.

Below are the EMA's answers to a few additional questions about this new American vaccine.

Can people who have already recovered from covid be vaccinated with Nuvaxovid?

There were no additional adverse reactions in subjects receiving Nuvaxovid in clinical trials who had previously had a coronavirus infection. There was insufficient data from the study to conclude how well Nuvaxovid works in people who have already had the virus.

Can pregnant and breastfeeding women be vaccinated with Nuvaxovid?

Animal studies do not indicate any harmful effects in pregnancy, however, data on the use of Nuvaxovid during pregnancy remains limited. Although there are no studies on breastfeeding, no risk is expected. The decision to use the vaccine in pregnant women should be made in close consultation with a healthcare professional after considering the benefits and risks.

Can children be vaccinated with Nuvaxovid?

Nuvaxovid is not currently recommended for people under 18 years of age. The EMA has agreed with Novavax on a plan for later testing of the vaccine in children.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 4 Feb 2022 - Croatia has registered 11,980 new coronavirus cases and 46 deaths in the last 24 hours, with the total death toll since the start of the pandemic in the country crossing the threshold of 14,000, the country's COVID crisis management team reported on Friday.

Of the 11,980 new cases, 8,094 were confirmed by PCR tests and 3,886 by rapid antigen tests. Compared with last Friday, the number of new infections dropped by more than 3,500.

According to the data provided by the national coronavirus response team, 2,126 infected persons are currently being treated in hospitals and 185 of them are placed on ventilators.

With the 46 deaths registered in the last 24 hours, the total coronavirus death toll has climbed to 14,035. Nearly 4,000 people have died since 17 November.

The number of active cases stands at 57,686 and 27,656 people are self-isolating.

Since 25 February 2020, when the first case was confirmed in Croatia, 971,464 people have been registered as having contracted the novel virus after 4,301,921 tests carried out.

As of Thursday, 56.60 per cent of the total population, or 67.35 per cent of the adult population, received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 64.96 per cent received two doses.

ZAGREB, 3 Feb 2022 - Health Minister Vili Beroš defended in parliament on Thursday the COVID certificate mandate and children testing as part of the fight against the pandemic and underlined the importance of vaccination because the tourist season could depend on it.

"One of the criteria the European Commission might consider for travel recommendations is the vaccination rate of the domestic population. If it is so, we'll have a problem and won't do well," Beroš told Emil Daus of the Istrian Democratic Party, who asked about plans for the summer tourist season.

Last year we were the champions of safety in the Mediterranean, but this summer the tourism situation might be bad and vaccination is the way out, Beroš said, adding that vaccines protect against serious illness and death also with the new variants.

Submitting a report on coronavirus protocols, he dismissed some MPs' claims that COVID certificates were pointless given that the vaccinated are contagious, too.

"COVID certificates don't represent absolute but optimal safety given what is being invested," Beroš said, adding that the vaccinated are far less contagious than the unvaccinated.

He said no EU member state had abolished the certificates and was not jumping to conclusions.

"Great Britain has abolished them, but it's not in the EU. Denmark is considering it but hasn't abolished them. Some countries with high vaccination rates are considering changing the application of COVID certificates, but are not abolishing them," the minister said, adding that the certificates are an instrument of the European Commission and that they enable travel.

As for the testing of children, Beroš said it was being introduced not only for health safety but to allow children to go to school. Testing is harmless and is being conducted in 16 European countries, he added.

Defending the justification of testing, the minister said that since it was introduced in the public sector, 1.6 million tests had been done and that 116,000 came back positive.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 3 Feb 2022 - Minister Nikolina Brnjac and tourism sector representatives warned on Thursday about the need to have a higher rate of vaccination against COVID-19 in the country, calling on the sector and other stakeholders to be responsible so as to maintain the current good situation with bookings.

The tourism minister and officials said this after this year's first session of the Council for Tourism Development and Recovery, at which Brnjac informed sector representatives about work on a new tourism strategy and new developments regarding labor.

Brnjac said a new online system for the registration and import of workers would be put into operation on 1 March, which would expedite the process.

Speaking of the new rules of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), on which a country's color now also depends on the vaccination rate, Brnjac said that the vaccination rate in the Mediterranean is already much higher than in Croatia.

"Even though the vaccination rate in the tourism sector is around 70% and the sector was among the first to respond to the vaccination campaign, we call for maintaining a responsible approach because it is vital to avoid ending up as a dark red zone," she said.

Croatian Public Health Institute (HZJZ) assistant director Marija Bubaš said that all EU countries were now dark red on the ECDC map but that most that had a higher vaccination rate were expected to see a larger drop in infections than Croatia.

Hoteliers worried despite good booking

Even though the situation with bookings for this year's tourist season, notably summer, is good, the head of the Hoteliers Association at the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK), Josipa Jutt Ferlan, said hoteliers were worried about the increase in infections as well as the rising energy and other prices.

"We are actually again back to square one and we hope that all our efforts to fight the pandemic will not go to waste. One should really work on raising the awareness that the vaccination rate is insufficient and needs to be higher. That is why it is still too early to say if the start of the tourist season will be good or not," she said.

The head of the UHPA association of travel agencies, Tomislav Fain, said that the booking for this season was good and even better than for 2019, but he, too, warned that agency and other bookings in tourism and travel, in general, depend much on rules restricting travel, calling for making those rules uniform.

H​​​e also thanked the government for continuing its job-keeping support for travel agencies.

For more, check out our politics section.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 3 Feb 2022 - Science and Education Minister Radovan Fuchs said on Thursday that the self-testing of students would start once the Buffer Stock Directorate delivered tests to schools, and that testing would be conducted in three stages, after which they would hopefully no longer be necessary. 

Parents will test their children for coronavirus voluntarily on Mondays, and if a positive case is identified in a class, testing will be done again and students who test negative will continue attending face-to-face classes.

We assume parents will not cheat because the purpose of this measure is to make it possible for as many children as possible to continue attending physical classes, Fuchs said, recalling that entire classes had to go online just because a few students were positive.

The testing will be conducted for a month, and if everything is as we plan it to be, we will switch to testing only in those classes where a positive case is identified, the minister said.

The third stage is the cancellation of self-testing, he said, expressing hope that eventually it would be possible to abolish the mandatory wearing of face masks in schools.

The Buffer Stock Directorate will today open bids for the procurement of tests and the beginning of self-testing will depend on when schools are supplied with the tests, the minister said, adding that he would talk to school principals via video link today and that the Croatian Public Health Institute had prepared instructions for parents.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 3 Feb 2022 - In the last 24 hours, there have been 13,186 new cases of infection with coronavirus in Croatia, identified with both PCR and rapid antigen tests, while 42 patients have died, the national COVID-19 crisis management team said on Thursday.

A total of 2,108 patients are receiving hospital treatment, including 194 who are on ventilators.

The number of active cases stands at 59,927 while 26,731 people are self-isolating.

Since the start of the epidemic in March 2020, 963,370 people have become infected with the novel coronavirus and 13,989 have died.

To date, 4,285,836 persons have been tested, including 18,142 in the past 24 hours.

A total of 56.58% of the total population has been vaccinated with at least one dose or 67.33% of adults. A total of 64.92% of adults have been fully vaccinated.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 3 Feb 2022 - Health Minister Vili Beroš said in the parliament on Thursday the battle against coronavirus could be won only with unity and a science-based approach, vaccination, and compliance with epidemiological rules.

Submitting a report on the effects of epidemiological measures taken to fight coronavirus between 1 September and the end of December 2021, the minister defended the introduction of the EU digital certificate, which he said had proven to be "a universal tool in the fight against the epidemic in all EU members", noting that ample research confirmed its efficacy.

As for figures related to the pandemic, since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Croatian Health Insurance Institute has paid close to five billion kuna from mandatory health insurance, and around HRK 122 million for special bonuses to health workers.

In the period from 1 September to the end of December 2021, 1.4 million vaccine doses were administered, putting the total number of vaccine doses used at 4.7 million. By the end of December 2021, 55.58% of the total population was vaccinated, or 66.33% of the adult population, with the vaccination rate being the highest in Zagreb.

Number of fatalities due to low vaccination rate, population age, risk factors

Responding to opposition criticism regarding the high COVID-19 mortality rate, Beroš said that Croatia had a low vaccination rate, an old population and that there were many risk factors, such as obesity, smoking and alcohol consumption.

Also, high mortality was reported also before the epidemic, and as regards lethality - the number of deaths in relation to the number of infections, is lower than in many other countries in the world and around the lethality rate in Europe, he said.

Beroš also noted that hospitals did not deal exclusively with COVID patients and that the latest information showed that hospitals provided for cancer patients without any problems and that no problems had been identified in the implementation of preventive cancer programmes either.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 3 Feb 2022 - Ahead of a parliamentary debate on a government report on the effects of epidemiological measures taken to fight coronavirus between 1 September and the end of December 2021, the issue of COVID certificates divided the parliamentary majority and opposition deputies.

Opposition deputies stressed that the introduction of those certificates was the worst decision in the two years of the pandemic and that they should be abolished while the ruling HDZ insisted the certificates had to be kept.

Abolishing the certificates would leave us within our borders, and we want to be European citizens and travel, said HDZ MP Maja Grba Bujević.

Let us abolish the certificates, a discriminatory measure that we cannot afford anyway, and that has proven ineffective and costs the economy too much. Money for testing could be used in a much better way, said Bridge MP Marija Selak Raspudić.

Marijan Pavliček of the Croatian Sovereignists said that a number of contradictory and futile decisions had been made in the past two years, with the one on the introduction of certificates being the worst.

Pavliček as well as Stephen Nikola Bartulica (Homeland Movement) criticized plans to test school children.

"By introducing testing you are putting pressure on children and parents, the more so as children get infected less and have milder symptoms," Pavliček said.

SDP: We need clear leadership, clear measures

Social Democratic Party (SDP) MP Peđa Grbin expressed hope the Omicron variant was the light at the end of the tunnel.

Now that we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we need clear leadership and clear measures so that we do not make a mistake on the path on which we have often wondered, he said.

Ivana Kekin of the Green-Left Bloc said that since the end of October Croatia had lost more than 5,000 people to COVID, describing that as tragic.

We are ninth in the world in terms of the number of COVID fatalities, we have the highest death rate when it comes to deaths caused by the Omicron variant, in January we lost 1,800 people and 80% of them were not vaccinated, she said, wondering who would assume responsibility - the COVID-19 response team, the health minister or the prime minister.

Answering to opposition criticisms, HDZ MP Grba Bujević said wise and well-thought-out measures were taken.

One should not just look at the figures but at a number of other elements as well. The government and the state invested a lot of effort to procure the vaccine, which is free, the health system did not collapse even though some said it would, and free testing is available, she said.

For more, check out our politics section.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 2 Feb 2022 - In the past 24 hours, there have been 15,287 new cases of coronavirus infections in Croatia, the national COVID-19 crisis management team reported on Wednesday.

The COVID-related death toll has risen by 54, to a total of 13,947.

Currently, there are 60,264 active cases of those infected with SARS-CoV-2. 2,067 COVID patients are receiving hospital treatment, of which 190 are placed on ventilators.

As many as 64.89% of adults have fully been vaccinated.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 1 Feb 2022 - In the past 24 hours Croatia has logged 7,385 new COVID cases whereas another 66 people have died as a consequence, the national COVID response team reported on Tuesday.

There are currently 2,052 hospitalised COVID patients, including 183 on ventilators.

There are 54,773 active cases in the country and 28,890 people are self-isolating, while 7,196 have recovered in the past 24 hours.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, 944,552 cases of coronavirus infection have been identified and 13,893 people have died of the disease.

To date, 4,247,960 tests have been conducted, including 16,589 in the past 24 hours.

A total of 56.55% of the population has been vaccinated with at least one dose or 67.29% of the adult population while 64.85% of the adult population has received two doses.