Croatia's health authorities reported on Thursday that 2,032 new cases of the coronavirus and 9 Covid-related deaths have been recorded in the country over the previous 24 hours - the first time in five months that the daily death count dropped into single-digit territory.

The figures continue to fall from the peak of the most recent pandemic surge in January. The rolling seven-day case count now stands at 10,080, or on average 1,440 per day, a slight increase for the third day in a row. The 14-day case count is now 19,139 or on average 1,367 cases per day, or 31 percent down from the the previous two-week period.

Maybe more significantly, the death count is still falling in spite of the recent uptick in cases. The rolling seven-day death count is now 98, dropping into double-digits for the first time since early October, and about 33 percent down from 149 deaths in the week prior.

As of Thursday, there were 11,073 active cases in the country, including 696 Covid patients in hospital care, also a five-month low.

To date, Croatia has registered more than one million coronavirus cases, and the total pandemic-related death toll now stands at 15,392. This amounts to an average of about 20 deaths per day since the first case was detected in the country on February 25, 2020.

At the same time, some 2.30 million Croatians have received at least one shot of any Covid-19 vaccine so far, which health authorities translates to 56.9 percent of the country’s entire population. This is the calculation released by health authorities, which project the current population at little under 4.1 million, even though the latest 2021 census figures released in January by the state statistics bureau put the current population size at 3.88 million.

Some 2.23 million Croatians have been fully immunized against the disease to date, which health services say translates to around 65.6 percent of adults – which implies that there are currently 3.4 million adults living in the country.

At the same time, the vaccination uptake rate has slowed to a trickle. Even though the vaccines are widely available and free of charge, the interest in vaccines is reportedly very low – on Wednesday authorities reported that close to 1,900 vaccine shots had been administered that day, including 293 first-timers. Booster shots have been available since December, but authorities do not include statistics on boosters in their daily reports.

The daily figures 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 which are sometimes leaked to the local media who conflate them with official figures.