Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia report biggest one-day rise in COVID-19 cases

ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatia reported its biggest rise in daily new COVID-19 infections on Thursday with 1,563 cases, nearly half of which were in its capital Zagreb, where they more than doubled.

Zagreb recorded a high of 705 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday compared with the previous day's 337 infections.

So far, Croatia, a country of some four million people, has recorded 29,850 cases with 406 deaths. There are currently 7,380 active cases.

Neighbouring Slovenia, with two million people, also reported a record number of daily cases on Thursday, reaching 1,663 infections.

Slovenia's Prime Minister Janez Jansa said that from Saturday all non-essential activities in the country would be halted for seven days to contain the disease. These include hotels and other businesses that provide food, drinks and accommodation, shopping centres and kindergartens.

Exceptions will be food stores and stores for construction material and for pets.

Croatia's southeastern neighbour, Bosnia, on Thursday reported a record 999 new infections, bringing the total cases in the country of about 3.3 million to 37,314, with 1,051 deaths.

(Reporting by Igor Ilic in Zagreb and Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo; editing by Giles Elgood)