The mutated new variant of coronavirus dubbed the British variant is continuing to spread throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and after the first case was identified last week, four more cases have been confirmed, it was said on Wednesday.

Teufik Goletic, a professor at the Sarajevo Veterinary Faculty and head of the faculty's laboratory that is sequencing samples with the aim to identify the mutated virus, confirmed for local media that four new cases of the B117 variant had been confirmed and that three were citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Two samples are from the Zenica region and one from the Sarajevo region. Unfortunately, this suggests that what we expected is possible, that the British variant is already circulating and that we can realistically expect it to be one of the dominant variants in the country soon,” Goletic said as carried by the Dnevni Avaz news portal.

The first case of the British variant was related to a foreign national who arrived in the country in late December.

The danger of the virus spreading quickly is quite real as vaccination has not yet begun in Bosnia.

Only about 300 medical staff have been inoculated with the Russian vaccine and only in the Republika Srpska entity.

Bosnia has not yet received any of the 1.23 million doses from Western manufacturers it has ordered via the COVAX mechanism and authorities hope that the first deliveries could be expected by the end of February.

The epidemiological situation in BiH is still relatively stable as daily numbers of new cases are not growing and have remained stable at about 300 to 400 since mid-January. Today 368 new cases and six COVID deaths have been reported.