Bosnia's Federation (FBiH) entity has always had the money for the vaccine, it was the procedure that was the issue, Assistant FBiH Health Minister Goran Cerkez told N1 Friday commenting on the late payment of FBiH's obligations for the procurement of coronavirus vaccines. He added that the vaccine is expected to arrive in the second quarter of 2021.

“The main problem was the short deadline for the implementation of procedures prescribed by law. It's important to note that the FBiH Ministry did everything within the set time frame and that we received a request for the payment of full the amount – some €5 million on December 11. Our procedures could not respect such a short time frame,” Cerkez noted.

When asked when the FBiH residents could expect the vaccine, Cerkez could not answer because no vaccine was approved in Europe yet.
“You can see that no European country, apart from the UK, started vaccinating their citizens. The EU hasn't approved a single vaccine. We can't talk about exact deadlines. We're trying to get it through two mechanisms expecting to get our hands on it in the second quarter of 2021. We'll start off our immunisation program with the initial 20 percent of the population, first vaccinating health care workers and elderly. Bosnia requested 2.5 million doses,” Cerkez confirmed.

According to him, FBiH is ready to start vaccinating tomorrow, if the vaccine would be ready by then.

When asked to comment on the announcement of Bosnia's Republika Srpska (RS) plans to procure the Russian vaccine via the COVAX mechanism, Cerkez noted that this is the decision of their entity Ministry and that the FBiH does not have enough information regarding this vaccine. The FBiH Ministry is waiting for the vaccines approved by the EU, he concluded