Authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina are making decisions on how to control the coronavirus epidemic in a chaotic way, so the risk of the infection spreading is still there, an official of the Health Ministry in the Federation entity said on Friday.

Assistant Minister at the Federation entity's Health Ministry, Goran Cerkez, told a press conference in Sarajevo that the obligation of self-isolation for persons entering the country from abroad had been lifted too soon, which could jeopardise everything that had been done to date.

“We should have waited until the end of the month, bearing in mind that proposals for lifting the measures are given every 15 days,” Cerkez said, underscoring that lifting the self-isolation measure, on which the Federation entity's crisis management team decided on Thursday, was practically forced after a unilateral decision in the Republika Srpska entity (RS). Previously, the plan had been to do it in a coordinated way starting from June 1.

Immediately after the self-isolation measure had been lifted, both entities saw an increase in cross-border travel, especially a large influx of those coming from abroad to celebrate the upcoming Eid with their families in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the past, too, the authorities of the country's two entities made unilateral decisions related to the epidemiological situation, often without any prior consultation.

The Serb entity almost entirely copied the measures introduced by Serbia, resorting to drastic restrictions on movement, while the Federation entity adopted no such extreme measures.

Despite this, the Federation has been seeing a single-digit increase in the number of new cases, while in the RS the increase is often a two-digit number.

In the last 24 hours, the Federation entity has recorded two new cases of the coronavirus infection, while the RS has recorded 14.

The total number of cases of infection in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Friday was 2,372, with 136 deaths.