ZAGREB, 4 Oct 2019 - Unvaccinated employees of the KBC Split hospital and members of the public on Monday staged a protest outside the hospital in that coastal city, shouting insults at members of the hospital management.

As of today, employees in the healthcare and welfare systems, visitors, and persons accompanying patients have to have digital COVID-19 certificates. All health workers coming to work have to present their COVID-19 certificate showing that they have either been vaccinated or have recovered from the coronavirus infection while others have to undergo testing two times a week.

The protesters outside the KBC Split hospital shouted insults at members of the hospital management, and some started pulling at them. They also shouted insults at reporters in an attempt to prevent them from taking statements from the hospital management.

The protesters said that they were not against vaccination but against being forced to get vaccinated.

One of the emergency medical service employees said the new rules were a form of pressure and that everyone should have the right to choose while one doctor blamed COVID-19 fatalities on the media which, she said, "kept feeding the public such information, and that hospitalized patients were dying of fear, not of coronavirus."

Split-Dalmatia County Assembly deputy head Mate Šimundić was also among the protesters.

Hospital head Julije Meštrović toured the locations on the hospital premises where employees were being tested for COVID-19, noting that everything was well organized and that there was no queuing.

Asked to comment on the protest, he said that protesters had the right to express their opinion and that most of them were not hospital staff but members of the public.

No protests in Rijeka 

The first day of the new epidemiological regime for healthcare and welfare system workers in Rijeka was without problems or protests, with the testing of unvaccinated staff having started over the weekend.

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