Croatia's current coronavirus restrictions will remain in force until further notice, the head of the national Covid response team, Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic, said on Thursday after a meeting where restrictions - currently set to expire at midnight on Thursday - were discussed.

Speaking to the press after a meeting of the government’s Scientific Advisory Council, Bozinovic said that the meeting mostly focused on the current situation with the spread of coronavirus, and said that restrictions would not be tightened at the national level, but on the local level only, if necessary.

He said that the situation “varies from county to county,” adding that currently Primorje-Gorski Kotar has the tightest restrictions in place.

Bozinovic announced that an additional 50 million doses of vaccines were arriving in the EU in the second quarter of the year. He added that health experts had different opinions regarding whether to allow in-person school lessons, but added that “there is no reason now to change the decision for schools to go online” as the number of those infected is not falling but actually increasing.

As far as public’s skepticism towards the AstraZeneca vaccine, Bozinovic said that reports by the Halmed drug regulator and the Croatian Institute for Public Health showed that they “have not had any experiences referred to in other countries.”

“However, it will be necessary to improve the trust in that vaccine through communication with the public,” Bozinovic said, adding that cabinet members, including the Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, had been inoculated with that vaccine.

“It is important for the overall public to realize that the pandemic has affected all four corners of the earth, and that we will come out of this situation when an adequate solution is applied in all the countries affected by Covid,” Bozinovic said.