Education Minister Radovan Fuchs said on Wednesday that he was surprised by the poor interest in vaccination among employees in the school system, underscoring that the interest varies across counties.

However, the minister is hopeful that by the end of the immunisation campaign, between 45% and 50% of teachers will  have been vaccinated against coronavirus.

In Dubrovnik-Neretva County, a mere 16.6% of teaching staff has shown an interest in being inoculated, while the highest interest has been registered in Koprivnica-Krizevci, Varazdin and Zagreb counties as well as the City of Zagreb.

Commenting on the results of a survey, Fuchs said that the ministry possessed data that 12% of teaching staff in Croatia had caught the novel virus and recovered from this infectious disease so far.

Also some of the staff, primarily those suffering from chronic diseases have already be given shots, he said recalling that in Medjimurje, Primorje-Gorski Kotar and Sisak-Moslavina counties, a portion of teaching staff have been vaccinated to date.

The minister admitted that he could not give an easy answer to the question from the press about teachers’ scepticism towards the immunisation.

He said that he was also surprised by the reluctance of some of the teachers and elaborated that when it came to Dubrovnik-Neretva County, the general mood in that part of Croatia seemed to be that people did not want to be inoculated against other diseases, either.