Croatian Public Health Institute (HZJZ) director Krunoslav Capak said on Friday that he was not satisfied with the pace of Covid-19 vaccine delivery and that the vaccination plan would have to be changed because less than planned supplies were being delivered.

“We are not satisfied with the delivery, it is far below what we agreed. What makes the situation more difficult is that at the beginning we were given larger quantities of the vaccine and in the meantime (in later shipments) they have decreased,” Capak said at a news conference of the national coronavirus task force.

“We will manage to vaccinate everyone who had been given the first dose of the vaccine, but new vaccinations will have to be suspended for now, as we do not have new vaccine supplies to begin administering the Pfizer vaccine,” Capak said.

He added that Pfizer had reduced its deliveries for the next month by 30 percent.

Moderna, too, has changed the amount of the vaccine to be delivered, the delivery is a week late and it was promised that 11,000 doses would be delivered after February 1, he said.

“We must change the vaccination schedule because at the moment we do not have enough of the Pfizer vaccine to increase the number of people to be vaccinated but are keeping it for the second round of vaccination,” he said.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be registered in the EU on 29 January, its fast distribution has been promised and additional quantities, promised after the 29 December earthquake, are expected from the EU.

Capak says that the rate of inoculation of the population depends on vaccine deliveries but that with greater quantities of the AstraZeneca vaccine and all the other vaccines, it is possible to achieve a high rate of inoculation of the general population by the summer.

He said that the epidemiological situation in the country had improved but that there was a danger of new virus strains and that one should also take into account the situation in the earthquake-hit Sisak-Moslavina County when considering possible relaxation of restrictions.

He said that compared to the previous week, there was a 21 percent drop in the number of new infections. The incidence is highest in Sisak-Moslavina County, which has a rate of 428 infections per 100,000 people, and it is lowest in Istria, with 114.5 new infections per 100,000 people.

The share of new infections in the tests done is 12.3 percent, which puts Croatia in 13th place in the EU. So far 64,951 people have been vaccinated, and in Sisak-Moslavina County 5,863 have been vaccinated, said Capak.

The head of Zagreb’s Fran Mihaljevic hospital for infectious diseases, Alemka Markotic, said that the third new variant of the virus originated in Brazil and that it differed from the strains found in the UK and in South Africa.

It seems this virus could partially bypass the response of antibodies in persons who had already developed immunity, either because of previous infection or vaccination, and that can also affect serological tests, she warned.

The entire EU agreed that virus genome sequencing should be stepped up, she said, warning that coronavirus was prone to mutation and new ways to spread.

As for possible easing of coronavirus restrictions, she called for caution, saying that the winter season facilitates the spread of the virus.

Even though vaccines seem to be effective against the strain from the UK, one should follow new mutations and adapt diagnostic tests to the new variants, she said.

The European Commission believes that the new variants of the virus put us back where we were a year ago when it appeared. Everyone hopes that the existing vaccines and tests will be appropriate for new variants, but we have to be extremely cautious to prevent them from spreading, Markotić said.

The head of the national coronavirus task force, Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic, declined to comment on the possible easing of restrictions, adding that members of the coronavirus task force and cabinet ministers would meet on Sunday to discuss this topic.

He also said that the EU was ready to provide financial assistance for virus genome sequencing in the member-states.

“The European Commission wants EU countries to sequence at least five percent of all positive Covid-19 tests. We must step up our efforts to prevent potential damage from new strains,” Bozinovic said.

Earlier in the day, the team said that over the last 24 hours, 643 new cases had been confirmed and 32 people had died from the disease.