"Visits to prison inmates and persons in custody, notably those at Zagreb's Remetinec prison, have not been allowed over the past month due to coronavirus having entered the prison system," state agency Hina reported on Friday, citing an article published by Vecernji List daily.

Inmates have also not been able to exercise their right to spend some weekends outside the prison system.

The Justice and Public Administration Ministry says the Prison Administration Department has been implementing a set of measures since the start of the pandemic to prevent the virus from entering and spreading in the prison system.

Under one of those measures, before prisons were last closed for visitors, only visitors who were vaccinated, had recovered from Covid-19 or had a negative test not older than 48 hours were allowed to make a visit.

Nonetheless, this did not prevent the virus from entering the system and according to this week’s data from the ministry, 23 inmates and persons in custody at Remetinec are infected while 110 are self-isolating. In the entire prison system, 27 inmates are infected and 127 are in self-isolation.

The ministry notes that no employees at Remetinec are infected or in self-isolation.

Since the start of the pandemic, 2,321 inmates and 1,598 employees in the prison system have been vaccinated.

The exact number of persons tested and infected in the prison system will be known once the report on the state and work of penitentiaries, prisons and correctional facilities for 2021 is released, the daily says. Hina did not say when this is expected to happen.