April 24, 2021 - The Health Ministry on Saturday said that the cijepise.zdravlje.hr platform for arranging COVID vaccination appointments had shown some deficiencies, which is why efforts are being made to remove them and all who have used this platform to sign up to get vaccinated will be given appointments.

The ministry underscores that a glitch that has led to arranging appointments for vaccination of younger citizens before some older ones are inoculated has been fixed.

The ministry admitted that some shortcomings of the platform had been detected. However, the ministry notes that some general practitioners have failed to fully cooperate in implementing this system and updating the data entered in the register for planned vaccinations, which has also caused obstacles for the smooth implementation of the vaccine rollout plan.

The ministry underscores that some county health authorities have made the local online vaccine booking system for themselves.

All that has made it more challenging for the platform to deliver on its expectations, the ministry said in a press release.

It recalls that Health Minister Vili Beroš has already dismissed speculations and insinuations about cronyistic relations with the companies or people involved in selecting this platform.

For more about COVID-19 in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

April 24, 2021 - The health ministry on Saturday refuted media allegations about deleting 4,000 Covid jab bookings for getting vaccinated from the CijepiSe registration platform on 23 February.

The ministry explained that some minor technical deficiencies appeared in connecting the relevant data about holders of social security numbers during the test trial of the platform.

The ministry was notified about this information after it asked the company to develop and manage the cijepise.zdravlje.hr platform to give its opinion on the matter.

It has been established that all the data relevant for making vaccination appointments were not connected in the case of 200 citizens who booked COVID vaccinations during the trial test of the platform.

As soon as it got this information, the ministry demanded an urgent solution to the problem, and then solving the issue is ongoing, the ministry said.

The ministry dispelled fears that this might adversely affect the schedule for getting vaccinated, explaining that the schedule for administering COVID-19 vaccinations is arranged according to the priorities defined in the vaccine rollout plan and not according to o the date of sending the request for vaccination.

As many as 160,000 Croatians have booked COVID vaccines through the cijepise.zdravlje.hr, and no irregularities except the above-mentioned technical problem involving 200 entries have been recorded.

For more about COVID-19 in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

April 24, 2021 - Due to several errors on the Cijepise.hr website, county bureaus have given up calling citizens registered through the national platform.

The multi-million kunaa Ministry of Health platform Cijepise.zdravlje.hr, which was pompously put into operation in February and which saw tens of thousands of citizens apply for vaccination, has utterly failed. 

As Jutarnji List learned from the county institutes of public health, in most counties, no one was able to get vaccinated after registering on the platform, and those counties that tried to use it gave up because the system was unclear and full of errors, which created clutter and chaos on the ground.

At the largest mass vaccination point in the country, the Zagreb Fair, only citizens ordered by family doctors through the CEZIH ordering system were vaccinated this week. The Teaching Institute for Public Health "Dr. Andrija Štampar" says that they decided to do so after the experience from previous weeks when they tried to implement and report from the platform. Still, the response of those invited from the platform was extremely low - from 20 to a maximum of 50 percent, due to which their numerous deadlines remained unfilled.

There are probably more reasons for this. There is a shorter call time, the development of information about side effects with certain vaccines, and even technical challenges such as emails being classified as 'Promotions' for Google mail clients, they explain. They used to receive the registered call late in the evening with the notification that they have a vaccination date at 8 am, so they would see the email a few hours after their appointment had already passed.

After the arrival of Pfizer and the need to raise the reliability of those invited to a higher level, this week, Zagreb exclusively chose the family doctor channel for vaccinations. 

"This has successfully raised the capacity to about 4,500 citizens per day," they said.

They add that so far, a total of more than 30,000 people have been vaccinated at the Fair, of which about 7,000 (23%) through the platform. They also tried to use the Cijepise.hr platform in Varaždin. Still, as Marin Bosilj, the director of the Varaždin Institute, revealed, they experienced an incredible mess that they do not want to repeat.

"On the day of vaccination, they subsequently sent us people, without their full names, only initials. So we controlled the OIB at the checkpoints and slowed down the whole process. Also, it was not clearly indicated to the people that they had first just registered them as interested and that they would only be given an appointment later. That is why, when the checkpoint opened, everyone enrolled came. Chaos," he points out and adds that in such a confusion, only about 500 people ordered through the platform were vaccinated at two points in three terms. All the others, 3,900 of them vaccinated at checkpoints, were given an appointment through a family doctor.

"We have opened the office access to the national electronic platform. The institute opens an appointment, doctors, who are familiar with the technology, enroll in any other examination. The number of patients per doctor is limited so that those younger and more computer-savvy would not get more appointments than others with the fastest finger system. When the appointments are filled, we close the calendar, and further orders are not possible. All the data have already been entered, and it is enough to come to the checkpoint only with a confirmation," said the expert of the Institute of Information Technology Vedran Klarić.

"In Istria, we do not use the state platform, and we have not used it. We are still vaccinating the priority group - the chronically ill and those over 65 years of age. That is why vaccination through that platform is not a topic for us yet," says Ante Ivančić from the Istrian health center. For now, in the County of Istria, all those who want to be vaccinated are sent from their doctors.

The director of the Vukovar-Srijem County Public Health Institute, Dr. Kata Krešić, said that so far, they have not needed to use the platform at all.

"We didn't even have enough vaccines to use the platform. All vaccinations that have been performed so far have been in family medicine, and at the checkpoints, it was organized for people who were reported and referred by their family doctors," says Dr. Krešić.

Only 1,500 citizens of Karlovac County applied for vaccination through the Cijepise.zdravlje.hr platform, a rather small number of 22,450 people vaccinated so far, i.e., vaccines distributed. The director of the Karlovac County Public Health Institute, Branko Zoretić, emphasizes that a good part of that number has already been vaccinated because they are on the lists of their family doctor.

Jutarnji also asked the Ministry of Health for comments and data on several occasions. On Friday, we were told that the answer was "related to the topic of vaccinations and platforms in the work of professional services."

For more on coronavirus specific to Croatia, including travel, border, and quarantine rules, as well as the locations of vaccination points and testing centres up and down the country, make sure to bookmark our dedicated COVID-19 section.

April the 24th, 2021 - The Cijepi Se vaccine platform has been up and running for some time now, allowing residents of Croatia to indicate their desire to be immunised against the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and register themselves to be called upon for vaccination. 

The Cijepi Se vaccine platform cost some serious money, but one continental Croatian county, more specifically Medjimurje, has managed to put together something very similar for a fraction of the cost.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, beautiful Medjimurje County didn't want to wait for the state to sort things out for them to start vaccinating their residents against the new disease. Back in January this year, they independently launched their own local platform for vaccination applications. So far, 24,000 people have signed up through it and vaccinations can be received at 10 points throughout that particular county.

They have had an online vaccination platform for four months now and they have vaccinated more than half of those registered.

It could be said that their vaccination plan is going well thanks to the internet platform they created two months before the Cijepi Se vaccine platform was made and put into function across the nation by the state. Unlike the state, they didn’t have to fork out millions for that platform either, as it cost a mere 40,000 HRK.

Medjimurje County Prefect Matija Posavec said for 24sata that they do also use the state's Cijepi Se vaccine platform, but they still kept working with their own, through which a lot of people apply.

''We've only got about 3,000 people left to vaccinate in the priority group of people over the age of 65 and then we're done with that priority group. We've already started vaccinating those in the education system, and we've immunised half of those who applied so far. We also organised 10 mass vaccination points to relieve the pressure which was being put on healthcare centres. It all works and is going well. At a meeting on Wednesday, they announced that twice as many vaccines are on their way to Croatia, and with the help of our platform, we can already organise who will be invited for vaccination and when their appointment will be,'' said Posavec.

The fact that their platform works is also showcased by the information provided by the director of the Cakovec Health Centre, Dr. Branko Vrcic. When someone registers themselves on the vaccination platform in Medjimurje County, their request is processed within a mere half an hour and they already know the location and time of vaccination, unlike the issues faced by the far larger Cijepi Se vaccine platform which can take a long time before issuing a time and date for vaccination even for priority groups.

For more on coronavirus specific to Croatia, including travel, border and quarantine rules, as well as the locations of vaccination points and testing centres up and down the country, make sure to bookmark our dedicated COVID-19 section.

ZAGREB, 23 April, 2021 - Over the past 24 hours, Croatia has registered 2,529 new cases of the coronavirus infection and 46 deaths, the national COVID-19 crisis management team said on Friday.

There are 2,227 COVID patients in hospital, 221 of whom are on ventilators.

Since the start of the epidemic, 318,837 people have contracted coronavirus, 6,784 of them have died, while 295,885 have recovered, including 2,431 in the last 24 hours.

There are currently 34,660 people in self-isolation, and the number of active cases in Croatia stands at 16,168.

To date, 1,743,017 people have been tested, 8,783 of whom over the past 24 hours.

As at 22 April, 746,878 doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered in Croatia, and 593,972 people have been vaccinated, with 438,706 people receiving the first dose and 152,906 receiving both doses. For 2,360 people there is no data on how many doses they have received.

For more about COVID-19 in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

April the 23rd, 2021 - The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has well and truly changed the entire world as we have come to know it, making things we took for granted difficult to imagine now, such as easy and cheap travel for leisure, and even walking around shopping centres for hours on end without the need for masks or social distancing. Just how has the pandemic changed Croatian shopping and consumption habits?

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes, the world's largest online retailer, Amazon, under the influence of the coronavirus pandemic, increased its turnover by 38 percent. Thanks to retail innovation, Amazon's figure of 280 billion US dollars has grown to a staggering 386 billion. Although online stores aren't something new, grocery retail has so far mostly remained in the physical ''world'', with people going to large supermarkets in person, but with the arrival of the global pandemic, the way we buy groceries has also changed.

While some tried online shopping for the first time only during the pandemic, others took advantage of the opportunity to adapt quickly and opted for innovations that bring changes in an industry where there have been no tectonic changes since the very invention of the supermarket. The results of research into consumer habits are an indication that in order to stay on the market, it's necessary to change the way of doing business and use digital technologies to better adapt to customer needs.

Changes caused by the pandemic

When it comes specifically to Croatian shopping and consumption habits, the research conducted revealed that back at the very beginning of the pandemic, there was a considerable increase in the use of e-commerce and a change in consumer habits.

During the pandemic, 60.7 percent of Croatia's respondents mostly chose to shop online, but 39.3 percent of them stayed loyal to the traditional way of doing shopping. As many as 55 percent of respondents decided to go to the store once a week, while 13.6 percent of them did so several times a week. To inform themselves about products and services before buying them, 67.9 percent of the respondents used information platforms such as Google to find answers to questions.

Trends across the world are an indicator that in the future we will find practical solutions such as self check outs and the use of robots when shopping. Some of these solutions were presented by well-known retail chains well known to Croats, while in our country, the modernisation of the industry is still expected.

Self-service cash registers in our hands

In neighbouring Slovenia, the retail chain Mercator has introduced the M-scan service, which replaces traditional self-service cash registers and enables purchases via mobile phones. M-scan and similar solutions speed up the shopping process, are cheaper to perform than self-service cash registers, and are being tested worldwide.

Amazon has opened several stores in the USA under the name GO, where a system of sensors and cameras recognises purchased products, and a similar smart shopping trolley system is being tested by the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo.

Robots are part of the solution

With self check outs as a trend in retail, the use of robots is an increasingly common solution for fast and efficient business, and this could be the case for the Croatian shopping experience of the future too. The Ocado logistics system seems like something you should see in science fiction movies, but it’s actually a British online retail chain where robots work in a fully automated warehouse, boasting 35 percent sales growth last year.

On the other hand, robots could soon be walking around with people in Decathlon stores. With computer vision technology and RFID readers, the state of the stock and the items on the shelf will be monitored with the help of the Simba robot, which will provide trade and additional insight into consumer behaviour.

FairPrice, a supermarket chain based in Singapore, is working on testing the use of robots in food delivery. After completing the purchase of groceries, the customer can return to their activities because the bags will be delivered to them by a robot, and the mobile application will give confirmation of the agreed collection with a QR code.

While much of the above might seem totally unrealistic in relation to the Croatian shopping experience as we know it, standing around in lines at Konzum and trying to shove what we've purchased in a bag at the same rate as the cashier fires the items towards you, robotics in Croatia is advancing, and it could become a reality sooner than we might think.

The global pandemic has accelerated the process of change in the retail industry in a way that was previously unimaginable. The frequent use of contactless payments, which is becoming an increasing preference of customers so as to avoid touching too many items or indeed money, has reduced the need for contact, while the use of innovations in trade is an indicator of the need for digital transformation, which will not bypass the Croatian shopping experience of the future, or the wider domestic market.

For more, make sure to follow our lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 22 April, 2021 - Health Minister Vili Beroš said at a government session on Thursday that as of 1 May, 230,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines would be arriving in Croatia on a weekly basis, calling on citizens to register for vaccination.

"The pressure on hospitals has been growing, notably by younger patients. The number of hospitalisations and patients on ventilators continues to grow. The average age of hospitalised patients is 66.7, 15% are people under the age of 50, 15% are people aged 50-59 while the rest are people above 60," said Beroš.

Third vaccination phase to start soon

The minister noted that the arrival of a larger quantity of vaccines during May and June would facilitate the process of vaccination.

Public health institutes have been instructed to include in the vaccination process all health institutions and private medical workers in the public health service network, and to organise, along with vaccination in family medicine offices, mobile vaccination teams and a sufficient number of vaccination points as well as to use civil protection, army and other resources in the process.

The vaccination plan for priority groups will be finished next week and the third phase of vaccination will begin, Beroš said.

So far, 902,670 vaccine doses have arrived in Croatia and 80% of them have been administered. A vaccination rate of above the average 14.2% has been achieved in age groups above 60, he said.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković called on elderly people to register for vaccination, saying that a half of the country's adult population should be vaccinated by June 30.

"There will be enough vaccines, I call on all citizens to call their family doctors, register on the vaccination platform so that we can contribute together to health security," Plenković said.

"As many as 77% of people who have died of COVID-19 in Croatia since the start of the pandemic were aged above 70 and 93% were people older than 60. We call on all citizens who are above the age of 60, 70 to register for vaccination," the PM said.

The head of the national coronavirus crisis management team, Minister of the Interior Davor Božinović, said that there had been no changes to epidemiological restrictions at the national level, that existing restrictions had been extended, as had been most of those introduced by local crisis management teams.

For more about vaccines in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page

April 22, 2021 - The US Embassy Croatia Travel Advisory is advising US travelers not to travel to Croatia as of April 21, 2021. 

The US Embassy issued a travel advisory for Croatia on April 21, 2021, urging US travelers that Croatia has moved to the #4 Advisory Level - Do Not Travel. 

All information from the US Embassy below: 

"Do not travel to Croatia due to COVID-19.

Read the Department of State’s COVID-19 page before you plan any international travel.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a Level 4 Travel Health Notice for the Croatia due to COVID-19, indicating a very high level of COVID-19 in the country. There are restrictions in place affecting U.S. citizen entry into Croatia. Visit the Embassy's COVID-19 page for more information on COVID-19 in Croatia.

Read the country information page.

If you decide to travel to Croatia:

• See the U.S. Embassy's web page regarding COVID-19.
• Visit the https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/index.html">CDC’s webpage on Travel and COVID-19.
• Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive Alerts and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
• Follow the Department of State on https://www.facebook.com/travelgov">Facebook and https://www.twitter.com/travelgov">Twitter.
• Review the Crime and Safety Report for Croatia.
• Prepare a contingency plan for emergency situations. Review the Traveler’s Checklist.

Last Update: Reissued with updates to COVID-19 information."

For the latest travel updates and COVID-19 news from Croatia HERE.

For more on travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page. For more about COVID-19 in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page. 

April 22, 2021 - Covid passports in Croatia could be implemented as early as June. Index.hr shares the latest on Covid passports in the country. 

Croatia is working intensively on 'Covid passports' which should be in circulation as early as the beginning of June, according to Index.hr.

"It is designed to be issued digitally. An application will be created to generate a secure QR code that will contain information about the passenger, their name and surname, the date when they received the vaccine, when they were tested, or when they recovered from Covid. This is being done intensively; Croatia is certainly among the countries working most actively on it. Our plan is for everything to be finished by the beginning of June," said Index's well-informed source.

The Ministry of Health will be in charge of everything related to the Covid passport or the mentioned QR code.

Croatia is one of thirteen European countries that have already agreed on criteria for Covid passports, i.e., digital certificates that would facilitate travel during the pandemic.

Along with Croatia, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain are involved in the initiative, and the European Commission should soon comment on the criteria.

Austrian Minister of Tourism Elisabeth Köstinger recently stated that this initiative for the faster introduction of the passport should enable the survival of the European tourism sector.

This confirmation would guarantee passengers that they will not end up in quarantine.

Recall that the European Commission in mid-March proposed introducing a digital green certificate for free movement within the EU during the pandemic, which would be evidence of vaccination, a negative test, or proof that you have recovered from the virus. 

France became the first EU member state to start testing digital covid passports. The TousAntiCovid application is part of the state program for searching for contacts of infected people. It has been upgraded to store data such as a negative result on passengers' mobile phones.

France's Le Monde reported that from April 29, the application would include vaccination data.

Everyone who is tested for coronavirus will also receive a digital confirmation by message or e-mail, which they will be able to store in the TousAntiCovid application.

Several EU member states are developing similar systems. Denmark was also among the first to present its Coronapas.

Football fans are allowed to enter stadiums, bars, and restaurants, and museums are reopening as Denmark takes a big step to lift restrictions. The condition for Danes to take advantage of the new freedom is that they must prove they are not infected, showing the Coronapas, writes the BBC.

It is a digital application MinSundhed (MyHealth), that shows whether a person has had a negative test result in the last 72 hours or a confirmation of vaccination or proof of a previous infection two to 12 weeks ago.

By the way, the extraordinary board of the World Health Organization (WHO) this week recommended that vaccination certificates not be a precondition for international travel because the vaccine is unevenly distributed between countries.

For the latest travel updates and COVID-19 news from Croatia, HERE.

For more on travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, 22 April, 2021 - Over the past 24 hours, Croatia has registered 2,885 new cases of the coronavirus infection, and there were 46 deaths, the national COVID-19 crisis management team said on Thursday.

There are 2,229 COVID patients in hospitals, including 226 on ventilators.

Over the past 24 hours, 46 people have died, bringing the death toll to 6,738 since the start of the epidemic.

There are 16,116 active cases in Croatia today, and 33,940 people are in self-isolation.

To date, 1,734,234 people have been tested, including 10,537 people tested over the past 24 hours.

Since the start of the epidemic in Croatia, a total of 316,308 people have contracted coronavirus, and 293,454 of them have recovered, 2,103 recovered in the past 24 hours.

As at 21 April, 726,315 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered in Croatia, and 578,273 people have been vaccinated, with 427,919 people receiving the first dose and 148,042 receiving both doses. For 2,312 people there is no data on how many doses they have received.

For more about COVID-19 in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.