BELGRADE – Tarnished for years by its brutal role in the horrific conflicts in the Balkans of the 1990s, Serbia is now basking in the glow of success in a good war: the battle to vaccinate its people.
Serbia ran ahead of Europe’s much richer and generally better organized countries to offer all adult citizens not just free vaccines, but a hodgepodge of five different vaccines to choose from.
On the other hand, the European Union stumbled a lot in the supply of vaccines, with a disconnected acquisition and distribution strategy that bet heavily on the AstraZeneca vaccine. That strategy hit an obstacle this week after key members of the bloc, including Germany and France, suspended inoculations with the vaccine for fear that it could increase the risk of blood clots, aggravating delivery problems stemming from a production deficit. that the company announced in January.
The unusual excess of vaccines in Serbia has been a public relations triumph for President Aleksandar Vucic’s increasingly authoritarian government. He polished his own image, as well as that of his country, weakened his already besieged opponents and added a new twist to the complex geopolitics of vaccines.
“You will one day erect a monument for me!” Vucic predicted last month, boasting that he secured cheap Chinese vaccine supplies by personally appealing to Chinese leader Xi Jinping for help.
Instead of leaning towards both East and West in an effort to secure supplies, Serbia, with a population of less than 7 million, made widespread bets, closing initial deals of more than 11 million doses with Russia and China, whose products have not been approved by European Regulators, as well as with Western pharmaceutical companies.
It closed its first vaccine deal, covering 2.2 million doses, with Pfizer in August and quickly closed contracts for millions more in Russia and China. How much you paid is a secret, but, Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar said, in an interview, prices were “much better than anyone else in the world has achieved”.
Opposition politicians doubt this and wonder if secrecy is a cover for corruption. But even Vucic’s most vocal critic, the leader of the largest opposition party, Dragan Djilas, admitted: “He did a good job of getting the vaccines.” Djilas was injected last month with Sputnik V from Russia.
As a result of its abundant supplies, Serbia has become the best vaccinator in Europe after Great Britain, show the data collected by OurWorldInData. He administered 29.5 doses for every 100 people last week, compared with just 10.5 in Germany, a country long seen in this part of the world as a model of efficiency and good governance, and 10.7 in France.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic attributed her country’s success to the decision to “treat this as a health issue, not a political issue. We negotiate with everyone, regardless of whether it is east or west. “
In an interview, she said that Serbia, which applied to join the European Union more than a decade ago, still wants to join the bloc, but added that “EU regulations are very strict. In times of a pandemic, we need to be more flexible ”.
The European Medicines Agency, which regulates which vaccines can be used in the block, started reviewing the Sputnik vaccine for use less than two weeks ago – more than three months after Serbia placed an initial order for one million doses in Moscow , and two months later extending them for general use. The agency has not yet begun to review Chinese vaccines.
Vucic announced last week that Serbia would become the first European country to start producing China’s Sinopharm vaccine. A new vaccine factory, financed by China and the United Arab Emirates, will begin production in the fall, he said.
Serbia’s readiness to adopt non-Western vaccines so far avoided by the European Union could backfire if they turn out to be weak. Sinopharm, unlike western vaccine manufacturers, has not published detailed data from Phase 3 trials. Published data suggest that its product is less effective than western vaccines.
Many Serbs, apparently reassured by the vaccination campaign, have also let their guard down against the risk of infection. The daily number of new cases has more than doubled since the beginning of February, prompting the government to order all businesses except food stores and pharmacies to close last weekend.
For now, however, Serbia is enjoying its unusual role as a model of efficiency.
Loncar, the health minister, blamed the stumbling blocks of the European Union in its focus on Western brands, preferably European ones, to the detriment of vaccines produced by Russia and China. “We are very happy to be able to solve this problem on our own,” he said.
Providing vaccines in a country with a population of just 6.9 million according to official figures, but probably less, is obviously much easier than in the European Union, which has about 450 million people. Even so, Serbia has largely avoided bureaucratic disputes and geopolitical pitfalls that have made it difficult to launch vaccines elsewhere.
At a time when most countries, including the United States, focus their early vaccination programs on priority groups, such as medical workers and the elderly, the Serbian government is offering free vaccines to everyone over the age of 18.
Those who want a vaccine just need to fill out an online form and select if they do not care about the brand they are going to buy or if they prefer Pfizer-BioNTech, Sputnik V, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca or Moderna.
Not all of these vaccines, however, are equally available and the markings for an injection depend on the option chosen. Whoever wants the Moderna vaccine will wait a long time: it has not yet arrived in Serbia. Serbia’s health ministry did not immediately comment on Tuesday whether it would follow Germany and other countries and stop vaccines with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
On a recent day at the country’s largest vaccination center, at the Belgrade Fair, a large exhibition complex in the Serbian capital, more than 7,000 people attended the consultations.
Almost all received the Sinopharm vaccine from China, which, according to clinical tests, has a 79 percent effectiveness rate, lower than Western and Russian vaccines.
There were also some booths offering the Pfizer vaccine and Sputnik V from Russia, but Chinese supplies were clearly more plentiful.
What is available on a given day, said Dragana Milosevic, a doctor who oversees the injections, varies depending on deliveries of a stock administered by the central government.
“I never expected it to be so easy,” said Biljana Stankovic, a 37-year-old molecular biologist, who, waiting to be called to a vaccination booth, said she did not care what she received. She added that she did not share Vucic’s political views, but “I am happy and surprised that everything is so well organized”.
With the exception of Hungary, the only other European nation to adopt Sputnik V, European countries have tied us up with the use of non-Western vaccines.
In Slovakia, the health minister was forced to resign last week because of his decision to make a request for Sputnik V, which some fellow ministers have denounced as a “hybrid war tool”. Hungary has been widely accused of breaking the ranks of the European Union and of approaching Moscow using Sputnik.
Serbia is pleased to show the European Union not only at home, but also in other states created by the collapse of Yugoslavia. Kosovo, which has put its hopes for vaccines in aid of the European bloc, has so far not received vaccines except those provided by Serbia, which started a vaccination program in ethnic Serbian enclaves, but was ordered to stop by the ethnic Kosovo Albanian government.
Bosnia also received small deliveries of vaccines from Serbia, as well as North Macedonia (former Macedonia), another new problematic state created after the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
The labor pains of European Union vaccines have irritated Serbs, who believe their future is in Europe, not Russia or China. “He failed at the most critical moment,” said Zoran Radovanovic, a retired professor of epidemiology.
He said he hated the direction Vucic took in the country by limiting media freedom and harassing critics. But, Mr. Radovanovic added: “Unlike so many other promises and false statements by Vucic, this is not just propaganda. Vaccines are real. We have them. “