ZAGREB, 1 Jan 2021 - Several Croatian cities, including the capital city of Zagreb, held New Year Eve parties in their main squares on Friday night, while a majority of big towns scrapped plans for outdoor celebrations for 2022 amid a rising number of new cases of the infection with coronavirus.

The fear of a surge in new cases due to the appearance of the Omicron variant limited the festivities that ushered in the new 2022.

The open-air New Year celebrations in Zagreb, Osijek, and Dubrovnik were held in line with COVID protocols, and guests attending the concerts in the squares of those cities were required to have COVID certificates.

Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomašević joined the revelers in the Trg Bana Jelačića Square on late Friday night and before that he visited the Kosnica shelter for the homeless and firefighters on duty.

In Osijek and Dubrovnik, the mayors also held a toast to welcome the 2022 year.

The entertainment programs featured local pop and folk bands. There were also firework displays.

The traditional farewell parties for the outgoing 2021 year were held in the town of Fužine in the hinterland of Rijeka and some other cities at noon on Friday.

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ZAGREB, 4 Nov 2021 - As of Monday, November 8, primary and secondary schools in Zagreb will go back to face-to-face classes, the city's education office said on Thursday. 

In case the epidemiological situation in a school worsens, the city office will, in cooperation with the "Andrija Štampar" Teaching Institute for Public Health, consider switching to online classes.

The city office for education said this decision was made in line with a conclusion of the city's COVID-19 response team of November 4.

This week, after All Saints' Day, schools have been holding online classes.

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ZAGREB, 29 Oct 2021 - Health Minister Vili Beroš said on Friday a decision was made under which family doctors would contact their patients over 65 in the next fortnight about getting vaccinated because 31.3% of people in that age group have not been vaccinated against COVID.

The most vulnerable persons, those over 65, are the priority in protection from COVID, he said at a press conference of the national COVID-19 crisis management team, adding that 40% of those over 80 have not been vaccinated either.

If doctors fail to contact their patients over 65 in the next fortnight, they should visit them at home, or have a district nurse do so, in the next 30 days, and then report to the ministry about what they have achieved. Those infirm should be vaccinated at home.

Beroš appealed to the elderly to get vaccinated. "Vaccination saves lives and it is our obligation to enable it."

He said 97 of the 177 persons over 65 who died of COVID this past week had not been vaccinated.

However, he said, interest in vaccination is growing and almost 6,000 of the 13,292 vaccinated yesterday received their first shot, the highest number since late July. Week on week it was an increase of 34.5%, and of 51.8% when compared with two weeks ago.

Croatian Institute of Public Health director Krunoslav Capak said there were 48.8% more new cases today than a week ago.

In the past 24 hours, 26 of the 32 COVID patients who ended up on ventilators and 20 of the 26 who died were not vaccinated.

The head of Zagreb's infectious diseases hospital, Alemka Markotić, told women who planned to get pregnant to get vaccinated or to do so after giving birth.

COVID certificates can't replace vaccination

Asked why COVID certificates were not required more widely, the head of the crisis management team, Interior Minister Davor Božinović, said the certificates offered a certain security but could not be a replacement for vaccination, adding that only vaccination could result in the pandemic abating.

"We are trying to do our best to have people vaccinated. We are thinking more and more about not limiting COVID certificates only to those vaccinated. We will also look at when they were vaccinated."

No one is considering another lockdown, but citizens must understand that this is a situation we will not get rid off anytime soon, Božinović said.

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ZAGREB, 1 Oct 2021 - Croatia has registered 1,517 new coronavirus cases and 10 COVID-19-related deaths in the last 24 hours, the national coronavirus response team reported on Friday.

The number of active cases now stands at 8,990, and 738 infected persons are receiving hospital treatment, including 99 who are on ventilators.

Since 25 February 2020, when the first case was confirmed in Croatia, 406,307 people have been registered as having contracted the novel virus, of whom 8,650 have died and 388,667 have recovered, including 1,392 in the last 24 hours. 23,044 people are currently self-isolating.

To date, 2,833,156 people have been tested for the virus, including 10,126 in the last 24 hours.

A total of 3,436,799 doses of vaccines have been administered, with 44.92 percent of the total population, or 53.89 percent of adults, having been vaccinated. 1,822,966 people have received at least one dose and 1,709,647 have been fully vaccinated, which makes up 50.62 percent of the adult population.

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ZAGREB, 20 Sept 2021 - An eighth-grader from the Krapinske Toplice elementary school came to school wearing a protective mask on Monday morning, thus ending his two-week absence caused by his parent's decision to defy the face mask rule.

"The boy resumed attending classes, and e entered the school building, wearing a protective mask while being in the hall", the school's headmaster, Samson Štibohar, told Hina.

At the beginning of the new school year, the father of this eighth-grader had claimed that his child could not wear the protective mask. The rule applies only in common areas of the school building in this northern Croatian town.

The father and several people who supported him held a protest rally on 10 September outside the school and later raided the school building. The police responded to the unruly rally and filed reports against some of the demonstrators.

After that, the headmaster and local employees of the social welfare center held talks with the parents, and the headmaster said today that the only thing that was important was that that the student was back in school.

"We achieved an agreement that it is essential for the student to resume his classes as usual", Štibohar said.

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ZAGREB, 18 Sept, 2021 - Commenting on the Freedom Festival rally, held in downtown Zagreb on Saturday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković described as unserious the emotionalism regarding freedoms in Croatia in the context of the country's COVID-19 death toll and restrictions in other countries.

"I find the emotionalism regarding freedoms, after so many COVID-19 deaths and the cost for the health system, unserious," Plenković told reporters during a visit to Vukovar.

The organisers of Freedom Festival 2.0 have said that "most people now realise that COVID-19 has been misused for political ends that include the introduction of an entire set of measures and decisions that cause unprecedented damage to humans and benefit only smaller groups in positions of immense power."

"COVID-19 has been here for more than 20 months, and if there are people who are still not aware of the reality, they should check media reports and credible information to see how many people have died so far around the world, including Croatia," the PM said in a comment on the Zagreb rally.

He noted that in the past 24 hours 12 people died of COVID-19 and that only two had been vaccinated, one being a 95-year-old woman and the other a person with a serious illness.

"I call on all citizens to be reasonable, responsible, there is protection and I don't see why they would not follow the example of the 52% of Croatians who have already been vaccinated," he said.

He said that Croatia had less restrictive anti-epidemic rules than some other countries and that the education system, transport, economy, production and social life had been functioning.

People in Croatia have been able to go to the cinema, theatre, to museums and restaurants, he noted, adding that that was why he considered the emotionalism regarding freedoms unserious.

I don't see reason for protests in Croatia

Even though mass protests are taking place across Europe, including France, Slovenia and Greece, Plenković said that he did not see any reason for protests in Croatia.

"The regime here has not been strict... people have been able to go to school, travel by bus, train, go to the cinema, theatre... What is missing? Discos? I think we can survive without discos for one season, hopefully the last one," he said, noting that the topic had been exaggerated as there was no reason for criticism about restriction of freedoms in Croatia

Noting that he was not imposing his opinion on anyone, Plenković said that as a responsible prime minister, trusting science, he wanted to repeat that COVID-19 was spread easily, that more than 8,300 Croatians had died of it and that the costs related to the disease amounted to HRK 36 billion.

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ZAGREB, 18 Sept, 2021 - Freedom Festival 2.0, a protest rally organised by the Rights and Freedoms Initiative, started on Saturday in Zagreb's Ban Josip Jelačić Square, with several hundred people rallying for the second time in a month to express their dissatisfaction with COVID-19 epidemiological restrictions.

The protesters carried banners expressing opposition to vaccination and decisions by the national COVID-19 response team.

The organisers said that "most people now realise that COVID-19 has been misused for political ends that include the introduction of an entire set of measures and decisions that cause unprecedented damage to humans and benefit only smaller groups in positions of immense power."

There was a strong police presence at the rally.

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ZAGREB, 2 Sept 2021 - In the last 24 hours, Croatia has performed 9,989 coronavirus tests, and 8% of them, that is 798, have turned out to be positive, and 11 COVID patients have died, bringing the COVID-related death toll to 8,349, the national coronavirus crisis management team stated on Thursday.

Currently, there are 3,943 active cases of infection in the country, and of them, 450 are receiving hospital treatment, including 53 patients placed on ventilators.

Since 25 February 2020 when Croatia reported its first registered COVID case, more than 2.56 million tests have been conducted, showing that 375,601 people have caught the virus. Of them, 363,309 have recovered to date.

Since the start of its vaccine rollout, Croatia has administered nearly 3.3 million vaccines, and 42.64% of the population, or 51.22 of the adult citizens, have been vaccinated.

To date, 1,619, 592  citizens,  that is 47.99% of the adult population, have fully been immunized.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, including travel, border, and quarantine rules, as well as the locations of vaccination points and testing centers across the country, make sure to bookmark our dedicated COVID-19 section and select your preferred language.

ZAGREB, 1 Sept, 2021 - Cafes in Croatia are again allowed to serve their customers indoors as of 1 September after they were closed for nine months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the new rules announced by the national COVID-19 response team, cafes and restaurants can stay open until midnight, customers must be seated while drinking and eating and must wear face masks before taking their seats and when going to the toilet.

In late November 2020, the national COVID-19 response team ordered cafes to close their indoor premises for business, allowing only those with terraces to operate.

Catering establishments have been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis over the past 18 months. "Many have been exhausted physically, psychologically and financially. There are cafes that will not be able to operate indoors because they lack staff, and there are also those that do not have terraces, so it will be a little easier for them after they were closed for nine months," the head of the independent association of cafe and restaurant owners from Zagreb, Žaklina Troskot, told Hina.

She noted that about 1,100 closed catering establishments would not reopen and that 10,000 jobs have been lost in this sector since the outbreak of the pandemic.

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August 31, 2021 - Health Minister Vili Beroš believes that removing all COVID-19 restrictions in Croatia is possible but will depend on the number of hospitalizations in the country. 

On Monday, Health Minister Vili Beroš held a meeting with the directors of several hospitals and with members of the expert group of the Ministry of Health, reports RTL.

"We discussed topics that are very current, and that is the response of the health system in this fourth wave, that is, in the colder weather in the autumn," Beroš said. 

He said that they talked constructively about what they had already learned, all to be ready for autumn.

"The situation is changing. We know how the virus spreads, what the clinical picture is. However, the fact is that more and more people are vaccinated in Croatia. This significantly changes the paradigm of patient treatment," he said, adding:" It was agreed to achieve the collective readiness of the entire health system. This does not mean that we are giving up the centralized approach. We just gained new experiences."

He also spoke about whether measures would be taken according to the number of hospitalized.

"It is exclusively an epidemiological issue; we did not discuss it at the meeting of the expert group. I will repeat my position; although I am not an epidemiologist, I have been in it for a year and a half, and I have developed some of my own thinking. The number of newly infected is absolutely adequate if everyone has the same clinical picture. Then you know that the number of newly infected people reflects the number of hospitalized people, the number of those who will end up on a respirator," said Beroš.

"However, this start of the fourth wave did not turn out like last summer. The clinical pictures were easier. Therefore, the number of newly infected is not relevant. Relevant is the number that will burden the health system, and that is the number of hospitalized and the number of the most severe patients on a respirator. That is more relevant information for me as the Minister of Health. Although looking broader epidemiologically, knowing both the number of newly infected and the percentage of positives among those detected and treated is good.

For now, we will stick to the general criteria. But you can be sure that for me personally, the greatest value of the data is the number of hospitalized, the number of newly hospitalized, and the number of those on a respirator," he underlined.

He said it was possible to scrap all measures.

"It simply came to our notice then. Whether this will happen will depend solely on the behavior of the virus. Because, if the virus spreads, if the number of hospitalized fellow citizens increases… at least I, as the Minister of Health, could hardly give up the measures. The last year we have witnessed that we have the two best elements to fight this disease: vaccination, respect for measures, general anti-epidemic, and those adopted by the Headquarters that regulate behavior. What are these behaviors? These are risky behaviors, and that can generate the spread of the virus," Beroš concluded. 

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