Thirty-one new cases of the coronavirus infection have been confirmed in Croatia in the last 24 hours, bringing their total to 1,982, while two patients have died, the national crisis management team said on Thursday.

The most new cases, 25, were confirmed in the southern Split-Dalmatia County, three were found in the northern Varazdin County, one in the Krapina-Zagorje County and one in the Osijek-Baranja County.

Death toll climbs to 50

Two persons have died in a hospital in Split since Wednesday, bringing the national death toll to 50.

A total of 28,853 people have been tested to date, including 1,231 in the last 24 hours.

The average age of the people infected with the novel coronavirus is 51.12 years.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic in Croatia in late February, 883 people have recovered from the disease.

Markotic: Situation in Croatia very good, but crisis is not over yet

“The situation in Croatia is very good but there is no reason to celebrate,” said the head of Zagreb’s Fran Mihaljevic Hospital for Infectious Diseases, Alemka Markotic, stressing that the pandemic was at its peak and that the crisis was not over yet.

Easing restrictions is important for the normalisation of life, but that does not mean that we can relax, she said, commenting on Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic’s announcement that restrictions put in place to combat the outbreak would soon be gradually relaxed. 

Krunoslav Capak, head of the Croatian Public Health Institute (HZJZ), said that stricter measures could still be reintroduced sometime in the future, if the infection flares up again. 

“Currently our reproduction number is good, at one moment it was as low as 0.4, but now it stands at about 0.8 – that means that one infected person infects less than one other individual,” he said. 

Commenting on the situation in a nursing home in Koprivnica, where the disease broke out on Wednesday and where 28 people – 23 residents and five staff members – have tested positive, Capak said that it was difficult to absolutely control the situation in nursing homes as asymptomatic patients could always spread the disease.

“A number of measures have been adopted with regard to nursing homes and we hope we are maintaining the sanitary corridor between nursing homes and the outside world, however, risks are always possible and that is why I would refrain from assessments as to whether a mistake was made at that nursing home,” he said.