Voluntary vaccination against COVID-19 for students will start most probably with high school graduates and in vocational schools where students attend job-specific training and are thus in contact with a larger number of other people, the Vecernji List daily reported on Tuesday.

Meetings on this topic are to be held in the coming days, after which final decisions will be made known.

The voluntary vaccination of children against COVID-19 started in Croatia in June, after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved the vaccines for children and young people in late May. Initially, it covered children who were at risk due to chronic, heart, and lung diseases.

The benefits of vaccination far outweigh possible side effects, said Dr Goran Tesovic of Zagreb’s Fran Mihaljevic Hospital for Infectious Diseases, adding it is justified to offer vaccination to school children.

Professor Nenad Ban, a molecular biologist at the Zurich Institute of Technology (ETH), has said that the adolescent population that can currently be vaccinated accounts for only three to five percent of the total population and its vaccination will therefore not have a crucial role in slowing down the spreading of the contagion, the daily reported, noting that the responsibility for vaccination rests with adults.