As Marina Klepo/Novac writes, those who view the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic with less concern often referred, among many other things, to official statistics that indicated that mortality in the country was not increasing significantly compared to the pre-crisis period. This was the case until the terrible month of November, when, according to the CBS, the number of Croatian deaths jumped sharply – to 5,486 people, 1,367 more than just one month earlier.
It cannot be said that such a large number of Croatian deaths in one month has never been recorded, but such numbers are usually seen at the beginning of a year, most often in January, during the height of the influenza season. The blackest of all was January 2017, when 6,441 Croatian deaths were recorded.
When it comes to November, the highest number of deaths in the past decade was recorded in early 2011, when it stood at 4,516, about a thousand less than in the same month in an entirely tragic 2020. When you look at the first eleven months of 2020, there were 49,286 Croatian deaths, which is 1,666 more than there were in the same period last year.
However, given that a major deterioration with the coronavirus crisis ensued in December, when 50 to 70 casualties were recorded daily across the country, the overall data for last year will be far more devastating. It is well known that Croatia is one of the countries that continuously records a decline in population, mainly due to emigration and low fertility rates.
Since the country’s independence from the former Yugoslavia, there have been more births than deaths in only two years – immediately after the war, in 1996 and 1997, when the natural increase was just over 3,000. In all other years, more people died than were born, and by 2012 that number was still below 10,000. In 2017 it reached almost 17,000. Due to the large emigration which took place following Croatia’s accession to the European Union in 2013, the number of newborns fell sharply, and this trend has continued to this day.
Thus, 36,135 children were born in Croatia last year, 5,642 fewer than in 2012. Poor demographic results were slightly mitigated in 2018 and 2019, but now everything points to the fact that 2020 will be a record year when it comes to reducing the number of inhabitants, this time due to a large increase in the number of Croatian deaths. In the first 11 months of 2020 alone, the number of inhabitants decreased by 16,167, which is close to the worst so far, in 2017, when it decreased by 16,921.
According to the CBS, last year, Croatia had 4,065,253 inhabitants, 230,174 fewer than there were back in 2010. Sisak-Moslavina County, which has now been hit by a strong earthquake and a loss of human lives, lost almost a fifth of its population in that period – 28,455 people.
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