North Macedonia in Talks to Buy Chinese COVID-19 Vaccines

North Macedonia is in talks to buy doses of the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Chinese companies Sinopharm and Sinovac, health minister Venko Filipce said as quoted by SeeNews on Tuesday.
The government expects to have the details relating to the contract, price and delivery by the end of the week, Filipce said in a interview for local TV show 360 Stepeni, published on the show’s YouTube channel on Monday.
At the same time, Skopje is waiting for a response from Pfizer over the details on the agreement for the delivery of doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, the health minister added. Earlier this month, North Macedonia reached an agreement with Pfizer for the supply of 800,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses in 2021.
The country also agreed with Serbia to receive at least 8,000 of the doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine which Serbia has ordered from the manufacturer. Filipce noted on Monday that the two neighbouring countries are still waiting for Pfizer’s approval of the plan.
In addition, the country will know on Friday when and how many vaccine doses it will receive through the Covax mechanism, Filipce noted.
North Macedonia has confirmed a total of 90,717 COVID-19 cases as of Monday. So far, 2,791 patients have died from the disease.