The head of the city of Split University Clinical Centre's infectious diseases department, Ivo Ivic, warned on Wednesday that coronavirus numbers were still high in the southern Croatian Split-Dalmatia County.

The infectious diseases specialist said he was afraid that new coronavirus numbers would continue rising and that the consequences of New Year’s Eve parties and gatherings would be getting hooked up to mechanical ventilators and funerals.

Over the last six weeks, the number of COVID patients being treated in the Split hospital was around 180, and we have now surpassed that number, he said.

As many as 100 patients have been admitted to emergency rooms for urgent checks both today and yesterday, and before that there were about 60 such cases a day, Ivic said.

Over the last two days, there were 47 COVID hospital admissions, when before that, we were seeing roughly 15 hospital admissions per day, he said.

The doctor warned that 80 percent of COVID patients admitted to the hospital were unvaccinated, with most of them aged over 80.

This infectious diseases specialist went on to say that although the healthcare authorities had been dealing with an intensive epidemic for six weeks, people did not change anything in their behaviour.

He warned about the fast spread of the Omicron variant, although it seems to have less pathogenic effects, and explained that the higher numbers of new cases meant more pressure on hospitals.

Ivic said that the low vaccination rate in this county should be ascribed to ignorance, a lack of understanding, and the victory of social media reporting that “exaggerates the side effects of the vaccines, so people, who cannot understand anything about that and have no knowledge of COVID and vaccines, feel insecure and do not want to be inoculated.”