"Croatia is at the peak of the third wave of the coronavirus epidemic, and that I expect the number of new cases to start falling," Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ) director Krunoslav Capak said on Friday.

“We are currently at the peak of the epidemic, it’s plateauing,” he said at a press conference of the national Covid-19 task force, adding that “the infection is most often transmitted at family gatherings where people don’t comply with epidemiological measures.”

Croatia records third highest incidence in EU

Capak said Croatia had the third highest 14-day incidence in the EU after Sweden and Cyprus, while ranking 19th in terms of mortality. Compared to last Friday, the number of new cases is down 0.3 percent, he added.

Capak said 17 percent of the entire population and 21 percent of the adult population have been vaccinated against Covid. Given the arrival of new doses, he expects 55 percent of the population to be vaccinated by end of June and that vaccination would continue over the summer.

He said journalists and police are now getting vaccinated, and that next week it would be the turn for the military and other emergency services.

Capak said that an serological study showed that about 25 percent of the population has been in contact with coronavirus and that this means that they are immune. “If one adds those vaccinated, during the summer we will have 70-80 percent of immune people.”

Health Minister, Vili Beros, said hospitals were under high pressure due to the rise in new cases in the past two and a half weeks but that they were managing to respond to every need.