Zagreb [Croatia], August 17: Over 430 people have died of COVID-19 in Croatia in the last six weeks, up from 74 in the same period last year, the country's Morning Paper reported on Tuesday.
This means that with 438 deaths between the beginning of July and August 15, the death rate from COVID-19 was 5.9 times higher than in the same period last year.
The newspaper also reported that there are currently 621 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Croatia, of which 25 are on ventilators. On the same day last year, 198 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized, of which 21 were on ventilators.
Moreover, the number of active COVID-19 cases in Croatia stood at 8,340 on Monday, whereas this figure was 1,903 on the same day last year, the report said.
For the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, there is now a summer wave, caused by the highly infectious Omicron variant BA.5, the Morning Paper said.
The sharp increase in cases is largely due to the booming tourist season, since last year the country was still relatively shut down.
Croatia has one of the highest mortality rates from COVID-19, immunologist Zlatko Trobonjaca told the Morning Paper. The country ranks eighth in the world in terms of mortality from COVID-19 per million inhabitants in the world, Trobonjaca said.
Until Monday, the total number of COVID-19 victims reached 16,508 in Croatia, while a year earlier on the same date, that number was 8,283. In other words, as many as 8,225 people died in one year, roughly the same number of people who died in the first year and a half of the pandemic in Croatia, the report said.
Source: Xinhua
