Croatia's health authorities reported on Thursday that 2,559 new cases of the coronavirus and 22 Covid-related deaths have been recorded in the country over the previous 24 hours.

The figures indicate a steady fall over the last three weeks from the most recent surge of cases which peaked in late January. The rolling seven-day case count now stands at 17,634, or 35 percent down from the previous seven-day period which saw 27,229 new cases.

Daily death counts are also falling. As of Thursday, there were 285 deaths over the past seven days, compared to 350 recorded in the seven days prior. As of Thursday, there were officially 20,578 active cases in the country, including 1,504 Covid patients in hospital care – the lowest number in nearly four months.

To date, Croatia has registered a little over a million of coronavirus cases. The total pandemic-related death toll now stands at 14,964, which amounts to, on average, about 20 deaths per day since the country’s first case was confirmed on February 25, 2020.

Around 2.3 million Croatians have received at least one shot of any Covid-19 vaccine to date, 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, which authorities say translates to around 65 percent of all Croatians over the age of 18, which implies that authorities calculate that the country has 3.4 million adults.

Meanwhile, the vaccination effort seems to have slowed down almost to a standstill. On Wednesday, some 3,800 shots of Covid vaccine have been administered, including merely 616 first-time jabs.

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.