Health Minister Vili Beros said at a government session on Thursday that vaccination against COVID-19 would be stepped up and would be taking place seven days a week and at least 12 hours a day.

The government has secured sufficient quantities of vaccines and a chain of command has been established for the sake of better organisation, with coordinators having been appointed at the national and regional levels, he said.

The chief coordinator is the director of the Croatian Public Health Institute, and three new coordinators have been appointed – for vaccination points, distribution, and IT support, Beros said.

He said that registration for vaccination via the CijepiSe online platform was functioning and that work was underway to remove delays in the entry of data on vaccination in the register of people who had been vaccinated. The data should be entered by 30 April, after which the entry of vaccinations should be done within 24 hours, he said.

Beros said that all resources would be mobilised to make sure vaccination was conducted seven days a week and at least 12 hours a day, which requires a sufficient number of staff administering vaccines and administrative-technical staff, which was why the Ministry of Defence and the Red Cross Croatia were asked to join in.

A new operational plan for the vaccination of active population is being worked on and priority groups are being determined, he said.

Beros said that, so far, more than one million vaccine doses had arrived in Croatia, that 825,000 or 81.7 percent had been administered and that 648,709 people had been vaccinated.

A vaccination rate of 16 percent has been achieved for people aged 60 and over. The rate for vaccination with the first dose is the highest in Zagreb (18 percent) while the rate with the second dose is the highest in Sisak-Moslavina County (6.65 percent).

The pressure on the hospital system is not subsiding, Beros warned, saying however that patients are adequately cared for and that hospitals had been asked to allow family members to visit patients in serious condition and in palliative care on the condition that epidemiological restrictions are complied with.