3rd COVID-19 wave ends in Croatia

Croatia's chief epidemiologist Krunoslav Capak said on Monday that the country is flattening the coronavirus curve and that he expects to see a drop in new hospitalizations and COVID-19-related deaths soon.

"This doesn't mean that the pandemic is over, but the third wave has ended," Capak told reporters in Koprivnica, a city in northern Croatia, which pioneered drive-through vaccination in the country. It is still possible that the new variants would result in a number of new COVID-19 cases, "but it seems to us that this is going in the right direction and that we have a decline."

According to Capak, Croatia plans to administer two million vaccine doses and to vaccinate 55 percent of the country's four million population by the end of June. Croatia is now receiving larger weekly vaccine deliveries and has accelerated its vaccination campaign. Furthermore, Capak said that the country has also stepped up its campaign aimed at educating the public.

He said that those who have had COVID-19 in the past six months should receive only one dose of a vaccine, citing studies that question the efficacy of a second dose.

In the past 24 hours, Croatia has registered 349 new cases of coronavirus infection and 36 related deaths. As of May 2, more than 900,000 vaccine doses had been administered in the country, and 708,137 people, or 21 percent of the adult population, had been vaccinated.