Croatia's health authorities reported on Wednesday 1,197 new cases of the coronavirus have been recorded in the country over the previous 24 hours, in addition to 1 Covid-related death. This is the highest daily case count on record in two months.

The rolling seven-day case count now stands at 4,201 – or on average 600 per day, more than 64 percent up from 365 per day recorded in the seven days prior. The 14-day case count is now 6,755, or 482 cases per day, also considerably higher from the the previous two-week period, which averaged 280 cases per day.

The current weekly case rate now more than double from two weeks ago, indicating a rapid spike in confirmed cases.

On Wednesday, the rolling seven-day death count was 21, up from 17 deaths reported in the week prior. Authorities say that there are currently 4,647 registered active cases in the country, including 243 Covid patients in hospital care.

To date, Croatia has registered close to 1.15 million coronavirus cases, and the total pandemic-related death toll now stands at 16,060. This amounts to an average of close to 19 deaths per day since the very first case reported in Croatia, on February 25, 2020.

Some 2.31 million Croatians have received at least one shot of any Covid-19 vaccine to date, which health authorities say translates to 59.5 percent of the country’s entire population. This is the calculation released by health authorities which project the current population size at 3.88 million, in line with the results from the 2021 census results released in January.

This figure includes some 2.24 million Croatians who have been fully immunized against the disease, which health services now say translates to around 68.8 percent of all adults, implying that statistically there are currently some 3.26 million Croatians aged 18 and above living in the country.

Although the vaccination numbers have been pretty much unchanged for some time now, the unexplained sudden increase in percentages beginning in early April seems to have come from a change in methodology used, as up until then health authorities used outdated estimates from before the 2021 census saying that the country had close to 4.1 million people, including 3.4 million adults.

Even though the vaccines are widely available and free of charge, the interest in vaccines among pandemic-fatigued Croatians is reportedly very low. On Tuesday alone, authorities reported that only 213 vaccine shots had been administered in the entire country, including just 38 first-time doses. Booster shots have been available since December 2021, but authorities do not include these statistics in their daily reports.

At this rate, it might take more than 70 years to inoculate the remaining 1 million non-vaccinated adults.

The daily numbers come from official reports which only account for cases confirmed by PCR tests and which are reported daily to the World Health Organization and other international agencies. Positive results detected via rapid antigen testing (RATs), including at-home tests, are reported and tracked via a separate registry. These are sometimes leaked to the local media who publish these without any attribution and who sometimes conflate these with officially confirmed figures, creating considerable discrepancies in their reporting.

Due to the low intensity of reported cases and the upcoming summer tourist season – the country’s largest single generator of income – the government scrapped nearly all pandemic rules in April. Face masks are still required in some public areas, though, mainly at hospitals and retirement homes. All pandemic-related travel restrictions for foreign nationals have also been scrapped in early May.

Also on Wednesday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic told reporters that in despite the uptick in cases, the government was not thinking about reimposing any restrictions, as the numbers of hospitalized patients is still comparably low.