Sarajevo Canton's (KS) Prime Minister Edin Forto said after an emergency session on Monday that the data indicate an increase in the number of infected people from the new coronavirus in the canton, but that the measures will not be tightened. Instead, the supervision over the existing ones will be strengthened.

Forto said that all efforts were made to avoid the collapse of the health system, and to prevent its paralysis – the following conclusions were adopted:

– The Ministry of Health will issue instructions to health institutions in the function of mobilizing its available staff into COVID teams. The aim is to expand the capacities in fighting the pandemic;

– The Health Insurance Institute will engage all resources in order to increase the number of tests, and private institutions will be engaged to help;

– The Institute of Public Health is ordered to submit daily analyses to the Crisis Staff and the Ministry in terms of hotspots. The goal is to implement measures on the places where the infection occurs most;

– The Directorate for Inspection Affairs of the KS is ordered to engage all staff to implement measures in accordance with the Law on the Protection of the Population from Infectious Diseases and it is necessary to redistribute all capacities for that purpose;

– An urgent amendment to the Law on Inspection Affairs is needed, with the aim of temporarily closing the facilities violating the measures;

– Wherever the Directorate for Inspection Affairs determines that a larger number of persons is gathered than allowed, it is to impose prohibiting measures on all those who were there for 10 days, due to the suspicion that they are infected;
– The Crisis Staff is ordered to return the competencies to the police for sanctioning violators of anti-pandemic measures.

“We are strengthening the supervision of the existing measures, we are increasing the capacity of health institutions, we are allowing the inspection to employ more people, the police to control the violation of measures. We’re not going into extra measures, but I’m terribly worried because it feels like the people have let their guard down. We are tired of all the measures over the past year, but we have to persevere and go through this. We do not see an end to the pandemic at this time. We are the only country whose authorities are not working on the procurement of vaccines. The only one. The vast majority of vaccine manufacturers only talk to other states,” Forto explained.