Possible relaxation of restrictions depends on people’s behaviour, minister says

(Photo: HINA/ Mario STRMOTIĆ/ ms)

ZAGREB, Dec 28 (Hina) – Health Minister Vili Beros said on Sunday that for now there were no reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine which was distributed in 20 cities across Croatia earlier in the day.

Speaking on Croatian Television, Beros said an e-system had been launched for doctors to enter data on people who had been vaccinated.

He said that for now there were no particular reactions to the vaccine and that the people who had been vaccinated would be monitored by their family doctors. If any symptoms appear, they are reported to family doctors or Croatia’s Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices.

The first 9,750 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in Croatia on Saturday for vaccination across the country to take place on the 27th, 28th and 29th.

Beros said a second batch would arrive before January 4. A certain number of doses will arrive by the end of the year and another 17,000 on January 4, he added.

The general population could be vaccinated in the spring, which depends on when other manufacturers register their vaccines, the minister said.

Croatia has ordered 5.6 million doses from a number of manufacturers for the first vaccination stage and another 300,000 for the end of 2021 to ensure continuity in case seasonal vaccination will be required every year.

Possible relaxation of restrictions depends on people’s behaviour

Beros said he was confident the declining trend of new infections would continue, which he attributed to the COVID-19 measures that had been taken as well as to people’s responsibility.

He appealed to people to continue to comply with the measures during the next three months. He said decisions on relaxing restrictions would be made depending on trends and the number of new infections.

The measures could be relaxed on January 10 but this depends solely on how people behave, Beros said.

The minister said he was not happy to see people gathering without masks over Christmas, warning that they must realise that such behaviour was unacceptable as long as the virus was around.

He reiterated that 70% of the population had to be vaccinated in order to achieve collective immunity. “Then things could be good, they could mean going back to normal.”