Croatia's health authorities reported on Thursday that 2,030 new cases of the coronavirus and 26 Covid-related deaths have been recorded in the country over the previous 24 hours.

The figures indicate a steady fall over the last month from the most recent surge which peaked in January. The rolling seven-day case count now stands at 16,065, or 37 percent down from the previous seven-day period which saw 25,659 cases detected. This is also the lowest seven-day count since late October.

Daily death counts are also falling. As of Friday, there were 285 deaths over the past seven days, down by 20 percent from 356 recorded in the seven days prior. There were officially 18,240 active cases in the country on Friday, including 1,445 Covid patients in hospital care, the lowest figure of severe cases since early November.

To date, Croatia has registered a little over a million of coronavirus cases. The total pandemic-related death toll now stands at 14,990, which amounts to, on average, more than 20 deaths per day since the country’s first case was confirmed on February 25, 2020, exactly two years ago.

So far, around 2.3 million Croatians have received at least one shot of any Covid-19 vaccine, which health authorities say translates to 56.8 percent of the country’s entire population, meaning that they project that Croatia’s current population is little under 4.1 million – even though the latest Census 2021 data released by the state’s bureau of statistics in January put the number at 3.9 million.

The total vaccination figure includes some 2.2 million Croatians who have been fully immunized against the disease with either single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or two shots of other vaccines available, which authorities say translates to around 65 percent of all Croatians over the age of 18, meaning that according to their  calculations the country has about 3.4 million adults.

However, in spite of government’s efforts to increase vaccination rates, the campaign seems to have slowed down to a standstill. On Friday, merely 1,700 shots of Covid vaccine have been administered, including just 227 first-time jabs. At this rate, it would take more than 14 years to vaccinate the remaining 1.2 million adults in the country.

The daily figures come from official reports which only account for cases confirmed by PCR tests and which health authorities report to international organizations such as the WHO and the EU. They do not include positive results from the less reliable rapid antigen tests (RAT) which are reported and tracked via a separate registry, and which local media sometimes conflate with officially released figures.