Capak: About 400,000 Croatians have come into contact with coronavirus

Krunoslav Capak (Photo: HINA/ PIXSELL/ POOL/ Goran Stanzl)

ZAGREB, Sept 22 (Hina) – Croatian Public Health Institute director Krunoslav Capak said on Tuesday he believed that about 400,000 people in Croatia had come into contact with the coronavirus, adding that this was still not enough to achieve herd immunity.

“If we take into account serological tests we conducted after the first wave in the spring, which showed that the number of people who came into contact with the virus was 25 to 30 times higher than the number of people infected, then this number should now be around 370,000 to 450,000, which means that about 400,000 people have come into contact with the virus,” Capak said in an interview with Nova TV in the evening.

He said that about 70 to 80 percent of the population would have to contract COVID-19 to achieve the effect of herd immunity, adding that this could hardly be expected to happen this year.

If the intensity of the disease continues as it has been so far, this number could be expected to surpass 50 percent sometime in the middle of next year, he added.

In the past 24 hours, 144 new cases were detected, bringing the number of active cases to 1,894, the national civil protection authority said.

In the past 24 hours, 250 people have recovered and 5,165 have been tested.

Since 25 February when the first case of the disease was detected in Croatia, there have been a total of 15,136 cases of the coronavirus registered, 255 of the patients have died, and a total of 12,987 people have recovered.

To date, a total of 267,297 tests for Covid-19 have been conducted.