Currently, the biggest problem in curbing the pandemic in Bosnia's Republika Srpska (RS) entity is contact-lying, where infected individuals lie about their contacts in an attempt to save them from mandatory self-isolation, Head of the monitoring team of the RS emergency situation staff Nenad Stevandic said Wednesday.

“Our people are lying so much about who their contacts are, and those who are identified as positive don't report their contacts because people asked them not to. It is not normal that we have fewer registered contacts with this number of infected people, at this moment, than we did four months ago, with four times less infected people. It is physically impossible,” Stevandic noted after a meeting of RS officials with representatives of the health sector, competent institutions and local communities on the complex and deteriorating epidemiological situation in this entity.

Following the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, the country was divided into two semi-autonomous entities with their own governments, competencies and institutions, all acting in accordance with the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war and which contains the country's Constitution within Annex 4 of the Agreement.

The Head of the monitoring team pointed out that the mass lying of contacts is currently rapidly helping the speed of the spread of the coronavirus infection in the RS.

“The level of responsibility must be raised, and we must exercise stronger control through institutions and introduce strict fines,” Stevandic stressed.

The team leader stated that there is an estimate that the situation regarding the spread of the coronavirus in the RS will radicalize in the next five to seven days.

“These are approximately two cycles of infection from five to seven days. This is a general estimate that may not be accurate,” he said.