BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – Serbia donated a first batch of 8,000 doses of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines to North Macedonia on Sunday, which has yet to deliver its first shots.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev attended a ceremony to hand over the shipment at the border posts, praising the friendship between the two neighboring Balkan states.
Serbia, a country of 7 million inhabitants, has vaccinated about 600,000 people so far, mainly with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine and Russian Sputnik V, and to a lesser extent with the Pfizer shot. The country has been one of the most successful in Europe in terms of the speed with which the vaccine has been rolled out to its population.
In contrast, North Macedonia, like most other countries of the Western Balkans, does not yet have a single dose of the coronavirus vaccine for its 2.1 million inhabitants. Many of the states in the region are rethinking their strategy of waiting for shots supplied by the west and are considering purchasing Chinese and Russian.
“A friend in need is indeed a friend,” Vucic said, while Zaev praised him for showing “real solidarity in practice”.
The transfer of the vaccine had to be delayed last week because Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech had demanded “additional documentation” from Serbia regarding the re-export of its injections, Vucic said.
Vucic’s opponents in Serbia have cited his vaccination donation to North Macedonia as one of his populist political movements, intended to portray him as the main regional leader. They say many in Serbia are still waiting in line to get vaccinated with their first-choice Pfizer shots.
Earlier this week, North Macedonian authorities signed an agreement to purchase 200,000 doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, hoping to launch their vaccination program later this month.