Croatia's COVID-19 epidemic among the worst in the EU

Croatia continues to have among the worst 14-day incidence rates for new COVID-19 infections in the European Union.

There were 1,886 new cases and 59 deaths reported in the past 24 hours. The case total was down on Monday, as is usually the case at the beginning of the week due to less testing over the weekend.

In the EU area, only Luxemburg is doing worse than Croatia, when it comes to new infections, according to the head of the Croatian Public Health Bureau, Krunoslav Capak.

"Our incidence is high right now, 1,154 per 100 thousand residents over the past 14 days. That rate puts us in 26th place in the EU rankings and only Luxemburg has a higher incidence than we do," Capak said at a coronavirus task force briefing on Monday.

The situation in northern Croatia continues to worry public health officials. Međimurje County has the highest 14-day incidence of any region in all of Europe and Croatia's death rate is also extremely high.

"With respect to mortality, we are in 14th place in the EU, with a current rate of 515 deaths per million residents,” Capak said.

Capak also addressed the question of whether people who have recovered from the virus needed to continue to wear masks. The answer he says is yes.

"Right now there is no evidence that people with immunity cannot spread the virus and that is why people who have had COVID should wear a mask," he said.

The national coronavirus task force will introduce this week more measures aimed at curbing the spread. They plan to limit the number of customers allowed into a store at any one time. This will be determined by the size of the space, says the head of the task force Davor Božinović.

"This will affect the number of customers which will be calculated based on the size of the shop. However, I expect the number to around 1 customer per 10 square meters of space," Božinović said.

Hospitals are treating 2,629 patients. That number has been creeping up steadily for several weeks. Pressure on hospitals is mounting. The Clinical Hospital in Osijek is treating 191 patients. The hospital expanded its COVID treatment center over the weekend and now has 66 additional beds that are free.

The coronavirus task force introduced tougher measures a week ago to deal with rising case numbers and deaths with a view that they could be scaled back before Christmas if the situation improved. However, the current incidence rate is much too high for anyone to be considering scaling back restrictions, said Capak. The numbers that other European countries are using as benchmarks to loosen restrictions are up to 20 times lower than Croatia's.