Ahead of a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Health Minister Vili Beros said that compared to last week there is now 32 percent fewer cases of Covid-19 in the country.

“We expected that the number of deaths would start to fall but that has not happened. However, there are now fewer hospitalised patients in serious condition,” Beros added.

A total of 60,958 Croatians have been vaccinated to date, including 7,843 who received both doses of the vaccine.

When asked to comment on the new genetically mutated strain of the coronavirus which has been detected in the UK and a number of other countries, Beros told reporters that Croatia has not registered a single cases of the new strain yet. However, health authorities plan to increase genetic sequencing, a method of screening virus strains.

“This was discussed yesterday at the European Commission’s Scientific Council because Europe is worried about the new variant of the virus, and the council recommended stepping up the sequencing in clusters where a larger number happens to get infected. This was recently the case in Croatia’s northern Varazdin and Medjimurje counties, and also with people arriving from high-risk countries such as South Africa and the UK,” Beros said.

When it comes to relaxing measures in Croatia, the minister said that the number of new cases is just one of the elements taken into account. Others include wintertime conditions, the way the pandemic is developing in neighbouring countries, the emergence of new virus strains, and so on.

“I think the worst thing now would be to make moves which are not backed (by data). Most of Europe is currently stepping up restrictions, so it is not realistic to expect any easing here until the epidemic eases enough for us to guarantee safety,” said Beros.