BELGRADE (Reuters) – Prime Minister Ana Brnabic received Serbia’s first COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, starting a mass inoculation campaign with doses developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Serbia is the third country in Europe to initiate mass vaccinations of COVID-19, after Great Britain and Switzerland.
About 4,875 doses of the coronavirus vaccines Pfizer and BioNTech were transported to Serbia on Tuesday.
“I am honored to be able to do this for my country and be the first, paving the way for other citizens (to be vaccinated),” said Brnabic after being inoculated at the Belgrade Institute of Virology, Vaccines and Serums.
Most European Union states, to which Serbia intends to join, will start vaccines against COVID-19 on December 27.
The United States has given emergency approval for vaccines developed by Pfizer / BioNTech, as well as Moderna.
Brnabic said shipments of Sinopharm vaccines from China and Sputnik V vaccines from Russia are expected to arrive in the country soon, but he did not give any specific timelines.
She said that President Aleksandar Vucic is likely to receive the Sinopharm vaccine. “We agreed that we both would take pictures of different producers,” Brnabic told reporters. Serbia would also obtain AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines next year.
Most of Pfizer / BioNTech’s initial vaccines will be given to elderly people accommodated in nursing homes.
Serbia reported 4,426 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours and 52 deaths on Wednesday. Since the start of the pandemic earlier this year, some 312,000 people in the country, including more than 3,000 nurses and doctors, have been infected and 2,833 have died. Hospitals are operating at full capacity.
(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Mark Heinrich)