Sarajevo Canton and its hospitals are still able to cope with the situation regarding the new coronavirus but there is a genuine concern when it comes to the upcoming period and the seasonal flue because its resources are close to reaching capacity warned epidemiologist Emina Papic and general manager of the Sarajevo University Clinical Centre Sebija Izetbegovic when talking to N1.

Currently, most patients are middle-aged people with an occasional youth or child, but this can change, Palic said. When asked if previous restrictive measures were successful at all, regarding the current increase in numbers, she said yes.

“There are two ways of dealing with this – the open model like the one in Sweden and the restrictive model. We took the path of the restrictive model as if we were dealing with the seasonal flu because the virus mostly subsided in summer and therefore we opted for restrictions. Considering that the virus was an unknown, I believe this was the right decision. However, the summer came and the situation was not as we expected but we have to move on. Each of us must take the responsibility for ourselves and those around us,” Papic said.

She noted she fears the upcoming flue season appealing to the citizens to vaccinate themselves against the flu.

When asked if some earlier restrictions should be reintroduced in the Canton, she told N1 she believes irresponsible individuals should be fined more often, especially regarding large gatherings without where people do not wear protective equipment.

Sarajevo University Clinical Centre'd general manager Sebija Izetbegovic also warned that the situation is quite worrying.

“The situation is definitely serious. I warned of this in my previous statements. I'm not prone to panic and I said this before but with this many patients we are bound to have a serious problem in our health care system,” she said.

When asked what would happen if all 100 beds at the Clinical Centre's ‘Podhrastovi’ Covid hospital were to become occupied she said that they've already transferred 15 doctors and seven nurses from other clinics to ‘Podhrastovi’ adding that other cantons keep sending their own patients to Sarajevo because they themselves still do not have Covid-19 hospitals, despite having the necessary staff and enough ventilators for the present situation.

According to her, the health care system in the Bosniak-Croat shared Federation entity is not functioning properly.

“If it did, we wouldn't be talking about this right now and you wouldn't be asking me what was happening. As far as I can see, only the Sarajevo Clinical Centre is doing its job, while others only make promises that they will do this and that, that they need more money but I don't see the report say from the Sarajevo General Hospital on the number of their Covid-19 patients,” Izetbegovic pointed out.

As an example of this, she also mentioned the neighbouring town of Gorazde whose patients are constantly being sent to Sarajevo:

“Gorazde is constantly filling our Covid hospital. We simply get a notification saying ‘despite having a Cantonal Hospital and ventilators, we can't take care of this patient so we're sending them to you.’ This way we can't tell if we'll have 15 od 25 patients today.”

She concluded that Sarajevo Canton's 7,000 medical professionals would be able to deal with all its patients had only other medical institutions in the canton and entity pulled their weight.