IntroductionReports of high rates of primary microcephaly and Guillain–Barré syndrome associated with Zika virus infection in French Polynesia and Brazil have raised concerns that the virus circulating in these regions is a rapidly developing neuropathic, teratogenic, emerging infectious public health threat. There are no licensed medical countermeasures (vaccines, therapies or preventive drugs) available for Zika virus infection and disease. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) predicts that Zika virus will continue to spread and eventually reach all countries and territories in the Americas with endemic Aedes mosquitoes. This paper reviews the status of the Zika virus outbreak, including medical countermeasure options, with a focus on how the epidemiology, insect vectors, neuropathology, virology and immunology inform options and strategies available for medical countermeasure development and deployment.MethodsMultiple information sources were employed to support the review. These included publically available literature, patents, official communications, English and Lusophone lay press. Online surveys were distributed to physicians in the US, Mexico and Argentina and responses analyzed. Computational epitope analysis as well as infectious disease outbreak modeling and forecasting were implemented. Field observations in Brazil were compiled and interviews conducted with public health officials.

Due to the pandemic crisis, the decline in cross-border travel has caused deterioration of consumption and induced the collapse of domestic consumption. Finally, the drop of the consumption in travel service affected the travel trade balance and caused decline of the economy. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the pandemic shock on the touristic sector in Croatia and to measure the effect of this negative trend. The research will be conducted using the SVAR model to disclose pandemic shock. The analysis considers the effect of the pandemic shock on the performance of the tourism sector, what is approximated by CROBEX turist index. Also, the analysis tests the impact of pandemic shock on turnover of the hotel industry. The results confirm the large-scale shock in the touristic sector and implicate the importance of measuring shock in assessing future trends and proposing measures for economic recovery in Croatia.

In terms of contemporary wine marketing, Croatia is still an emerging market -underdeveloped in certain aspects of market-driven activities related to all key stakeholders. Besides the well-developed, competitive and sustainable local wine industry, significant quantities of cheaper wines are imported. Consequently, price seems to be very important criteria for the market segmentation and positioning of local wines. In this paper, the authors provide some preliminary evidence regarding consumer preferences of different types of wine packaging. In addition, preliminary analysis detected potential/ possible relations between local brands and price based market positioning issues. The theoretical framework used in this study is based on the model of communicative dimensions of packaging. In order to achieve a broader view of the research topic, this qualitative study focuses on the generic wine producer's perspective. Consequently, a limited number of in-depth interviews with industry professionals involved in wine marketing were conducted. Through the content analysis, several important links between packaging perception and price based market segmentation were detected and presented. The results from this preliminary study could be useful for the further research of this topic within the South-eastern Europe.

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