Next week, the European Union will reconsider its decision to restrict travel to third countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, within member states.
Many items are taken into account in this process, and priority is given to the epidemiological situation and protection measures, including physical distance, as well as economic and social considerations, Avaz news portal reports.
The criteria that must be met are specified, and the first is that the number of new cases of coronavirus infection in the last 14 days per 100,000 inhabitants must be close to or below the EU average.
“The European Union has not determined any final number, but it is an average number of cases in the EU. As of July 30, that number is 20. But it also varies with them. So, that is the average number of infected people in 14 days in the entire EU. That number is relevant and third world countries must reach it in order to get the green light to travel to EU countries,” explains Amer Osmic, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo.
According to the calculation, in BiH in the 14-day period, from July 23 to August 5, per 100,000 inhabitants (if we take into account the official number of BiH citizens according to the 2013 census, which is 3,531,159) the average daily, the number of infected is 111, which is far more than the EU criteria.
“The real number of inhabitants, which is now less than the official data, would be affected by the number of infected per 100,000 would be higher. According to the research, compared to 2013, this year we have a significantly smaller number of inhabitants. According to the estimates of the Agency for Statistics, we are talking about 3.4 million, although the estimates of the non-governmental sector, researchers, scientific or academic community say that the number is closer to three million than 3.5 million. It ranges from 3 to 3.2 million. But we have no official data or census after 2013. Since there are fewer inhabitants and more infected, that number would not be 111, but 122. In any case, we have almost 5.5 times more infected per 100,000 inhabitants than the EU average,” concludes Osmic.
