Since early December 2020 to date, the healthcare system's costs concerning the coronavirus infection have increased threefold to reach 2.2 billion kuna, the Jutarnji List daily newspaper reported on Monday.

The biggest item in the COVID-related expenses is the hospital treatment of COVID patients, over a billion kuna to date.

The head of the Croatian Health Insurance Agency (HZZO), Lucian Vukelic, was quoted by the daily as saying that on average, the cost of a day of the hospital treatment of COVID patients was 6,000 kuna.

Vukelic also commented on other COVID-related expenses covered by the agency such as vaccination, procurement of drugs for COVID-19 (that is remdesivir, sold under the brand name Veklury, a broad-spectrum antiviral medication), antibody or serology tests .

Therefore the expenses in this sector have risen to HRK 3 billion, and according to Vukelić, for instance, 109 million kuna have been disbursed by the HZZO to date for the remdesivir procurement.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)