ZAGREB, 6 Feb 2022 - Croatia has recorded 6,001 new coronavirus cases and 59 deaths in the last 24 hours.

The national coronavirus response team said on Sunday that 4,780 new infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus had been detected by PCR tests, while media reported that another 1,221 had been identified by rapid antigen tests.

Currently, 2,140 COVID patients are being treated in hospitals, 178 are on ventilators, while 25,006 people are self-isolating.

Since 25 February 2020, when the first case was confirmed in Croatia, 983,780 people have been registered as having been infected with the novel coronavirus. Of this number, 14,137 have died and 917,608 have recovered, including 8,706 in the last 24 hours.

A total of 4,328,022 people have been tested to date, including 10,787 in the last 24 hours.

To date, 5,132,763 vaccine doses have been administered, making up 56.64% of the total population, or 67.39% of the adult population, who have been vaccinated.

A total of 2,298,364 people have received at least one dose while 2,212,347 of them have been fully vaccinated, making up 65.02% of the adult population.

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, 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, 29 Oct 2021 - Science and Education Minister Radovan Fuchs warned on Friday that life would not return to normal and schools would not be able to function normally until a sufficient number of citizens got vaccinated against COVID-19, noting that his ministry was carefully following the situation in schools.

"There will always be someone in self-isolation unless a sufficient number of citizens get vaccinated," Fuchs said during a visit to Župa Dubrovačka.

Asked about the situation after the school break next week, Fuchs said that he would be able to answer the question only if he knew how the epidemiological situation would unfold but that nonetheless it seemed that "something has changed in citizens' attitude" as more were willing to get vaccinated.

He dismissed the remark that the quality of education could be compromised, stressing that the experience of last year showed that the distribution of online classes was even and that his ministry was following decisions made by local COVID-19 response teams and had a very good data base on the number of students and teachers currently ill or in self-isolation.

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ZAGREB, 22 Oct 2021 - European Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides visited a COVID-19 vaccination point in Zagreb on Friday with Health Minister Vili Beroš, telling Croatian citizens to get vaccinated and listen to scientists' messages, not messages on social media.

Get vaccinated to protect yourselves, your fellow citizens and so that hospitals are not full of patients again. That's a very clear message, based on science and the reality we know. Listen to scientists, not experts on social media, Kyriakides said.

We are not in the same situation as in 2020. Today we have a safe and effective vaccine which was approved for use in the EU. We have enough vaccines, but we must go forward. We don't want to have a pandemic of the unvaccinated, she added.

Croatia has vaccinated about 55% of its adult population against coronavirus. It must accelerate it because in the EU we have more than 75% of the population fully vaccinated. That's why it's necessary to accelerate vaccination as much as possible so that we don't have areas in the EU that are still unprotected, she said.

Minister Beroš commented on a letter by five members of the government's Scientific Council who distanced themselves from statements made by Council member Gordan Lauc.

He said that when members of a scientific forum individually commented on "expertly established facts" on social media, contrary to the forum's clearly stated views, such commenting "is damaging."

Beroš added that he said yesterday all he had to say about Lauc and the Council and that, as far as he knew, most Council members wanted to continue to be part in it.

They don't intend to leave the Council as that would send a bad message of inconsistency, he added.

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ZAGREB, 8 June, 2021 - In the last 24 hours, 178 new coronavirus cases and five related deaths have been registered in Croatia, the national COVID-19 management team reported on Tuesday. 

Currently, there are 1,221 active cases, including 545 infected people receiving hospital treatment, of whom 51 are on ventilators.

Since 25 February 2020, when the first case was confirmed in the country, 357,786 people have been registered as having contracted the novel virus, of whom 8,096 have died and 348,469 have recovered, including 195 in the last 24 hours. A total of 6,954 persons are currently self-isolating.

To date, 2,054,032 people have been tested for the virus, including 6,814 in the last 24 hours.

By 7 June, 1,920,656 vaccine doses have been administered, with 1,345,741 people receiving one dose and 574,915 receiving both doses. On 7 June alone, 16,983 vaccine doses were administered.

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

ZAGREB, 20 May 2021 - As of today, every third adult in Croatia has been vaccinated against COVID-19, the Croatian Public Health Institute (HZJZ) said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, 19 May, 43,890 doses of the vaccine were used, and the number of persons that have received at least one dose reached 1,109,161, which is 27% of the population or 33% of the adult population, while 341,008 persons have received both doses.

According to data from the eCijepih platform, as of 20 May, every third adult in Croatia has been vaccinated, which is a big step forward compared to early May, when on 1 May every fifth adult citizen of Croatia had been vaccinated, the HZJZ said.

First dose vaccine coverage is highest in Zagreb, 31% of the total population or 37.6% of the adult population, and second dose vaccine coverage is highest in Sisak-Moslavina County, 12% of the population or 14.4% of adults.

"These are encouraging data that give us reason for optimism when it comes to meeting the goal of vaccinating over a half of Croatia's adult population by the end of June. Vaccination is going according to plan, the epidemiological situation is better than in previous weeks and this is certainly good news, especially in the context of the upcoming tourist season," said HZJZ deputy director Ivana Pavić Šimetin.

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 centres up and down the country, make sure to bookmark our dedicated COVID-19 section and choose your preferred language.

ZAGREB, 20 April, 2021 - In the past 24 hours, 9,831 coronavirus tests have been performed in Croatia and of them 21.4%, that is 2,106, have turned out to be positive, the country's COVID-19 crisis management team stated on Tuesday.

The COVID-related death toll has increased by 42 to 6,643.

Croatia has currently 13,999 active cases, including 2,198 patients who are receiving hospital treatment and of them 213 are placed on ventilators.

As many as 30,534 people are self-isolating.

Since the outbreak of the infection on 25 February last year, 1,713,174 people have been tested for the virus. So far Croatia has registered 310,306 coronavirus cases, and 289,664 recovered patients, including 1,877 in the past 24 hours.

Since the beginning of this year, 698,032 COVID vaccine doses have been administered under Croatia's vaccine rollout plan. The press release reads that until 19 April, 556,969 people have been given shots against this disease. As many as 413,812 people have received the first dose of the two-dose vaccine, and 141,063 have been inoculated with both doses.

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April 19, 2021 - Croatia is already beginning its third phase of vaccination, but the vaccination figures in Croatia regarding the over 65 age group are hardly satisfactory. 

Jutarnji List reports that in the second phase of vaccination, which ended in most parts of the country, only 38.6 percent of people over the age of 65 were vaccinated. However, according to data provided by the Croatian Institute of Public Health, the vaccine was offered to everyone.

According to estimates, 853,784 people over the age of 65 live in Croatia, and at least one dose of the vaccine was received by 329,367, or 38.6 percent, according to the CNIPH. Only 6.6 percent of those over 65 received both doses of the vaccine, but they are expected to receive a second dose. These are data until April 12.

Thus, a few days before the end of the second phase of vaccination, as many as 61.4 percent of people over 65 did not receive the vaccine.

While CNIPH did not explain why, experts are convinced that most of the problem lies in the fact that vaccination candidates have massively refused to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, which Croatia had the most of. 

In short, at the time we start the third phase of vaccination, which includes the general population and priority vaccinations of employees in certain sectors, such as tourism and education, Croatia's seniors are not vaccinated satisfactorily.

A bad image of this vaccine has been created in the public, which is why all HZJZ vaccination lines are overwhelmed by calls for rejections for AstraZeneca.

"People are ready to be vaccinated, but when they are told that they will get AstraZeneca, they give up; that is, they say that they will wait for another vaccine. Initially, after the approval of AstraZeneca, it was rejected only by the elderly because then it was questionable whether it affects people over 65. After the story with clots appeared, the vaccine is also rejected by the younger ones," said HZJZ unofficially. 

The Ministry of Health also confirmed a few days ago that the problem is with people refusing the AstraZenecina vaccine.

"Irrespective of when the application is registered on the cijepise.zdravlje.hr platform, senior citizens and patients with chronic diseases have priority, and invitations to young people and those without chronic diseases are sent only in case those from the priority groups refuse to fill the capacity of the mass vaccination point at the Zagreb Fair. This is the sole reason for getting an appointment at a mass vaccination point with individual citizens from the younger group concerning the priority group. Such a principle will be followed in the next calls for vaccinations at the checkpoint," said the relevant Ministry.

In the priority phase, which ended a long time ago, 52,449 health workers were vaccinated, or 71.4 percent of them, which means that almost every third health worker was not vaccinated.

"The highest vaccination coverage was achieved for people aged 80 and over, of whom more than 44 percent received the first or second dose," said the CNIPH.

The data show that confidence in the vaccine declines with age. Thus, the highest share of vaccinated is among those over 100 years of age: out of 142 of them living in Croatia, 84 or 59 percent were vaccinated. Half of our citizens aged 95 to 99, of whom there are 1,630, were vaccinated, while 48 percent of those aged 90 to 94 were vaccinated. The least vaccinated in the priority group are those aged 65 to 69, where only 73,979 or 28 percent of the total of 267,320 have been vaccinated so far. Confidence in the vaccine grows with age so that the next monitored age group of 70 to 74 has a vaccine share of 43 percent.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković pointed out that the goal is to vaccinate 55 percent of the total adult population by July 1. Is this possible with such a response?

"Our goal is to vaccinate more than 50 or 55 percent of the adult population with the first dose by at least July 1, and with those that have recovered, we could talk about very significant protection of the population from COVID-19," said the Prime Minister.

But to reach that percentage, they would have to vaccinate 17,747 citizens a day. It is logistically feasible, given that Zagreb alone can vaccinate ten thousand people a day, but the question is whether there will be enough interested people. Only about 150,000 citizens are registered on the cijepise.zdravlje.hr platform, and the numbers are as follows: According to the latest CBS estimate, Croatia has slightly less than 3.4 million adult citizens (3,364,426), and 55 percent of that number is 1,850,434.

When the already vaccinated are taken away, it follows that 1,331,059 citizens should be immunized by July 1. Despite all the problems, it is positive that many additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been procured, which citizens are more inclined to get. According to the latest data, 1.8 million doses of the vaccine should arrive in Croatia by the end of June.

"Pfizer has increased the availability of vaccines for Croatia. From the fourth week of April, these doses will be significantly higher, or about 100 thousand doses; in May, Croatia will receive 175 thousand doses, and in June, 200 thousand doses per week. We will receive a total of 1.805 million doses by the end of June," said the director of the CNIPH, Krunoslav Capak.

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