Serbia will produce Russian vaccine, Vucic: We will satisfy our needs, help our neighbors

The head of state stressed that by the end of the year Serbia aims to produce the Russian vaccine not only for its needs but also for the purpose of exporting it to the region.

I and President Putin made an agreement to start the entire procedure, which is complicated. We'll talk with Russian experts about how to speed up all the processes, see what we need, so by the end of the year we'll be able to start producing vaccines. We would like to produce more to help all in the region. Because it doesn't make sense that we get vaccinated and our neighbors don't. So this is something else that we intend to reach”, Vucic said.

A group of Russian experts are expected to visit Serbia next week to launch talks.

Vucic stressed that the country would spend 200-300m euros, or 0.7 per cent of the gross domestic product to buy enough vaccines.

Under the state vaccine programme, Serbs can currently choose between the vaccine produced by Pfizer I-BioNTech, China's Sinopharm, or Russia's Sputnik V.

Vucic stressed that hundreds of thousands of doses of three vaccines are expected to reach the country in the coming weeks, including Astra Zeneca vaccines.

Taking advantage of its close ties with China, which has invested billions of dollars in the Balkan country, Serbia was one of the first European countries to begin mass innoculating with a million doses of Chinese vaccine Sinopharm.

Serbia currently has the fourth highest vaccine rate for 100 people, after Israel, Britain and the United States.

More than 530,000 people either around 7.5% of Serbs have received the first dose of the vaccine.

So far, 402,700 Serb citizens have been infected and 4,085 have lost their lives. The infection rate has decreased in recent weeks, but thousands of patients remain hospitalised.