CROATIA has 265 new cases of the coronavirus infection, the highest daily number so far, but Health Minister Vili Beros does not consider this to be a significant departure from recent trends and believes that it is due to the summer tourist season.

Speaking at a regular news conference of the national COVID-19 response team on Friday, Beros said that 50% or 137 of the new cases were people who were in self-isolation, which, he said, showed that epidemiologists were doing a good job.

Beros noted that 1,647 tests had been conducted in the past 24 hours and that currently 6,446 people were self-isolating.

There has been one fatality in the past 24 hours, an elderly woman.

The death toll stands at 169. Eleven people have been hospitalised since yesterday, which puts the total number of hospitalised patients at 135, including 12 who are still on ventilators, Beros said.

There are currently 1,842 active cases of the COVID-19 disease in the country.

Beros believes that the latest figures do not depart radically from those in recent days and that they are due to Croatia being open to tourists, with a large number of foreign nationals having vacationed on its coast.

The increase in infections is certainly also due to "a certain kind of behaviour in summer time," said Beros.