Infectious diseases are among the leading public health concerns. A special group of infectious diseases are the emerging infectious diseases, i.e. the ones that have recently appeared within a population. They often occur in the form of epidemics or pandemics, and since they have been insufficiently researched, they can have a damaging impact on both health care and economy. Some historic examples include the Black Death pandemic in the 1340s, the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, AIDS in 1981, etc. The December of 2019 saw the appearance of a new type of respiratory illness of unknown origin in China. Shortly after the outbreak, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it was a new strain of coronavirus - SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2). The illness caused by this virus was then named Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The disease spread quickly across Europe and America, and subsequently to the rest of the world. This caused the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic on 11 March 2020. It is assumed that this virus originated in bats and, prior to infecting humans, was circulating among pangolins - animals characteristic to this part of Asia. Person-to-person transmission occurs through droplets, but infection is also possible from contact with contaminated surfaces. The disease manifests itself in humans in a variety of ways, from mild to extremely severe and fatal cases. The most common symptoms include mild fever, dry cough, fatigue, and muscle ache, but there has also been an increasing number of cases with loss of taste or smell. Even though there are still no proven treatments and vaccines for the disease, great efforts are underway to discover them. So far, more than 24 million cases have been reported in the world, resulting in around 850.000 deaths, and 9,192 people have been infected in the Republic of Croatia.