TIRANA – North Macedonia has managed to secure the COVID- 19 vaccine through Poland, which is an EU member country, said a report by Balkan web on Thursday.
The Minister of Health, Venko Filipce, said that the agreement was signed after the offer of the Polish ambassador to Skopje. According to the agreement, Poland will sell a part of the vaccines that will receive to North Macedonia.
Filipce assured that the government budget will be committed to the purchase of vaccines and they will be provided free of charge to the citizens.
The EU initially ordered 400 million vaccines from the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The supply is expected to start at the end of 2020 as the vaccine is in the final stages of testing. The vaccine, which the EU hopes to use, has been produced by Oxford University and began testing in July this year.
The leader of the opposition Democratic Party (DP), Lulzim Basha has urged the government to urgently provide funds for getting the vaccine so that Albanian citizens coould have the opportunity to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
As Thursday’s official statistics showed there were four fatalities and 155 new infected cases with COVID- 19 in the last 24 hours. /argumentum.al