"Croatia is approaching the end of the fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic," head of the Croatian public health service HZJZ, Krunoslav Capak, said on Friday, adding that "it is still unlikely that Croatia would officially declare the end of the pandemic."

“The fifth wave is ending and whether the pandemic is ending is yet to be seen, there are certain criteria. Croatia is not likely to declare an end to it that soon,” Capak said.

He noted that since 27 January, Croatia had recorded a downward trend in the ongoing fifth wave of cases, with a 50 percent drop in caseloads. However, compared to last Tuesday, there had been an increase in new cases of more than 20 percent.

“There are many reasons for that. The most important is a new BA2 variant which is somewhat more contagious than Omicron. The nature of this virus is that its genetic makeup is constantly changing, allowing it to acquire new features which prevent people’s immunity systems from functioning as they should,” Capak said.

He added that the BA2 variant is dominant in western Europe and that even though it isn’t in Croatia, there is still a large number of infections caused by it here. Capak could not confirm whether the new mutated “Deltacron” variant is present in Croatia, but announced that he would have more information about that “in the next 24 hours.”

Asked whether arrivals of refugees from Ukraine could worsen the Covid situation in Croatia, Capak said that health authorities were taking account of the situation in Ukraine, and that those people had travelled fairly quickly to get to Croatia, thereby reducing the risk of infection.

He added that Ukraine’s Covid situation is not bad, although the country reportedly has slightly lower vaccination rates compared to Croatia.