Countries should exchange their experiences regarding the fight against the coronavirus, Italy’s Ambassador Nicola Minasi told N1 on Tuesday, stressing that the key to managing the situation as well as possible is good cooperation between citizens and authorities.

“I hope that our experiences can help you avoid a situation like the one in Italy,” Minasi said.

The number of newly infected people in his country has decreased and Minasi argued that this is the result of the measures the government introduced.

“We must be careful and cautious,” Minasi said, urging Bosnians to obey all government measures and to stay home.

“It is important to maintain distance and respect the measures. We have an ongoing debate on how to open everything up again and we must first experiment and see whether we can keep the situation under control and stop the spread of the virus,” he said.

“We have come to understand that we must invest more in the healthcare system. We must be prepared to control the situation in the economy so that those who lost their jobs are insured. We must figure out how to do this together,” he argued.

Minasi stressed that the key is the cooperation between authorities and citizens and that “the government must explain what it is doing and which measures it wants to introduce so that people understand it.”

He called the coronavirus “a big test for the EU.”

“We must understand whether EU members see this situation as a collective problem or not. Italy believes that this is a collective problem. We must introduce joint measures. This is an opportunity for the EU to be stronger and better,” he said.

He also said that Italy’s people are grateful for the solidarity Bosnia expressed to his country.