The Croatian chamber of medicine HLK said on Tuesday that their investigation commission which probed the controversial Covid-related death of journalist Vladimir Matijanic in Split in August finally determined that "no omissions had been made" in his case, the state news agency Hina said on Tuesday, carrying a press release issued by the HLK.

In its opinion, forwarded to the Health Ministry and the country’s ombudswoman, the HLK said that medical professionals involved in Matijanic’s treatment acted “in line with basic medical standards.”

The 50-year-old Matijanic, who lived in Split and worked for the Index.hr news website, caught Covid and phoned his local hospital, KBC Split, for help. After getting visits from medical emergency  teams twice, his case was deemed not serious enough to be hospitalized, and eventually he died at home due to respiratory problems.

As a person suffering from a chronic immunodeficiency symptom, Matijanic did not get any coronavirus vaccine prior to his death, fearing possible side effects.

The HLK commission composed of medical professionals, said in their findings that “the patient had access to medical care at the primary, specialist, and tertiary levels, and that the doctors involved did not make omissions that could be linked to the negative course of his Covid-19 disease.”

The press release went on to say that the main reasons for the abrupt worsening of Matijanic’s condition and his death were the fact that he had not been vaccinated against Covid-19, an “excessive and aberrant response to the coronavirus combined with an untreated case of the Sjogren’s Syndrome,” and the “absence of antiviral treatment, pursuant to the Guidelines for the Treatment of Covid-19 Patients, Version 5.”

The last part is probably related to the fact that Covid-19 drugs approved by the EU meant for at-home treatment of complicated Covid-19 cases – which was recommended to Matijanic by one of the doctors he contacted – were unavailable at KBC Split at the time.

The HLK added that they couldn’t reveal the full expert findings about the case “due to the protection of personal information,” which likely refers to the medical professionals from KBC Split who were in contact with Matijanic.

Following Matijanic’s death, his girlfriend, also a journalist, gave Index.hr recordings of his phone conversations with the staff at the KBC Split hospital, as well as details surrounding his death, which Index.hr then published. The recordings caused public outrage, with the national association of journalists even calling for resignation from the Health Minister, Vili Beros, over the case.

The Health Ministry had set up a commission which also reported that they “did not identify any professional omissions” in the case, which then led to HND launching a petition signed by more than 4,600 people calling for a second investigation into the case, claiming that doctors involved were in a conflict of interest.