The coronavirus infection is spreading fast across Bosnia and Herzegovina, and as doctors warn that the new wave of the epidemic is expected to peak within two weeks, debates continue on how to obtain a vaccine, which has so far arrived only in symbolic amounts.

The first case of infection with the novel coronavirus in Bosnia and Herzegovina was confirmed last year today, and over 160,000 people have since been infected and more than 5,100 have died.

Over 470 new cases were reported on Friday. This week the numbers of daily infections exceeded 900, which hasn’t happened since early December. One of the hotspots is Sarajevo, where more than 2,600 cases are currently active. The weekly case incidence per 100,000 people in Sarajevo currently stands at 490.

“The situation is dramatic today,” the assistant health minister of the country’s Federation entity, Goran Cerkez, said on Friday, warning that Bosnia and Herzegovina might find itself in a similar situation in which Italy had been at the start of the pandemic.

Cerkez said that a new lockdown was likely unless something changed. The spread of the infection and vaccination are not necessarily connected, as shown by the case of Serbia where the infection is spreading despite the mass vaccination of the population, he warned.

The health authorities of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity are also concerned about the fast spread of the infection, even though RS has begun vaccination after receiving over 20,000 doses of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine.

The director of the Banja Luka Clinical Centre, Vlado Djajic, told a press conference on Friday that the situation was such that people should now be wearing face masks in their homes. He said that a major deterioration was expected within the next 10 to 15 days.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has ordered 1.23 million doses of vaccines manufactured by Western companies via the Covax mechanism, but has received none yet and is now trying to negotiate directly with the manufacturers.

The US pharmaceutical company Pfizer has tried to negotiate with the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but since it does not have a health ministry, “it turned out that the entities had to act as a state,” the premier of the Federation entity, Fadil Novalic, said in Sarajevo on Friday.

The Federation entity has so far received only 10,000 doses of vaccine donated by Serbia. Novalic said that the state had left the two entities to their own devices and that now it was necessary to set up a vaccine procurement authority.