BELGRADE – Serbia has been colored for years by its brutal role in the horrific Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, and is now embroiled in the glow of success in a good war: the struggle to get its people vaccinated.
Serbia has rushed ahead of the much richer and usually better organized countries in Europe to offer not only free vaccinations to all adult citizens, but also a campsite of five different vaccines to choose from.
In contrast, the European Union has stumbled badly in providing shots, with a diverse procurement and distribution strategy that has put a lot of emphasis on the AstraZeneca vaccine. This strategy hit a roadblock this week after key members of the bloc, including Germany and France, suspended vaccinations with the vaccine because it could increase the risk of blood clots, which could increase delivery problems resulting from a production shortage that the company announced in January.
Serbia’s unusual vaccination is a triumph of public relations for the increasingly authoritarian government of President Aleksandar Vucic. It burned down his own as well as his country’s image, weakened his already beleagured opponents and gave a new twist to the complicated geopolitics of vaccines.
“One day you will erect a monument for me!” Mr. Vucic predicted last month that he had secured cheap supplies of Chinese vaccines by personally appealing to China’s leader Xi Jinping.
Instead of tilting east or west in an effort to secure supplies, Serbia, with a population of less than 7 million, placed bets across the board, concluding initial transactions for 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 reached its first vaccine deal, which spans 2.2 million doses, with Pfizer in August, and quickly followed up on contracts for millions of others from Russia and China. How much it was paid is a secret, but, Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar said in an interview that the prices were “much better than anyone else in the world got.”
Opposition politicians doubt this and wonder if secrecy is a cover for corruption. But even Mr. Vucic’s most outspoken critic, the leader of the main opposition party, Dragan Djilas, conceded: “He did a good job of getting vaccinated.” Mr. Djilas was injected with Sputnik V from Russia last month.
Due to its abundant supplies, Serbia has become the best incarceration in Europe after Britain, according to data collected by OurWorldInData. Last week, it administered 29.5 doses for every 100 people, compared to only 10.5 in Germany, a country that has long been considered a model of efficiency and good governance in this part of the world, and 10.7 in France.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic attributed the success of her country to the decision to consider it “a health issue, not a political issue. We negotiated with everyone, whether it was east or west. ”
In an interview, she said Serbia, which applied for membership of the European Union more than a decade ago, still wants to join the bloc, but added that ‘regulations in the EU are very strict. In pandemic times, we need to be more flexible. ”
The European Medicines Agency, which regulates which vaccines can be used in the block, began reviewing the Sputnik vaccine for use less than two weeks ago – more than three months after Serbia placed an initial order with Moscow for ‘ a million doses, and two months later it rolls out for general use. The agency has not even begun reviewing Chinese vaccinations.
Mr. Vucic announced last week that Serbia would become the first European country to start manufacturing China’s Sinopharm vaccine. A new vaccine plant, funded by China and the United Arab Emirates, will start in the fall, he said.
Serbia’s willingness to accept non-Western vaccines that have so far been avoided by the European Union could catch fire again if it is rogue. Unlike Western vaccine manufacturers, Sinopharm did not publish detailed data from Phase 3 trials. Data that it has revealed indicates that the product is less effective than Western vaccines.
Many Serbs, apparently reassured by the vaccination, also lowered their protection against the risk of infection. The daily number of new businesses has more than doubled since the beginning of February, leading the government to order all businesses except grocery stores and pharmacies to close last weekend.
At present, however, Serbia is playing its unusual role as an efficiency model.
Mr. Health Minister Loncar blames the European Union’s obstacle to its focus on Western, preferably European, brands at the expense of vaccines manufactured by Russia and China. “We are very happy that we were able to solve this problem on our own,” he said.
Vaccination of vaccines in a country with only 6.9 million inhabitants according to official numbers, but probably less, is of course much easier than in the European Union, which has about 450 million people. Nevertheless, Serbia has largely avoided the bureaucratic bickering and geopolitical traps that have hampered the explosion of vaccines elsewhere.
At a time when most countries, including the United States, have focused their early vaccination programs on priority groups such as medical workers and the elderly, the Serbian government is now offering free shots to anyone over 18 years of age.
Anyone who wants a vaccine just needs to fill out a form online and choose whether they do not care what brand they are getting, or whether they prefer Pfizer-BioNTech, Sputnik V, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca or Moderna.
However, not all of these vaccines are equally available and appointments for a shot depend on the option chosen. Those who want Moderna’s vaccine will wait a long time: it has not yet arrived in Serbia. The Ministry of Health in Serbia on Tuesday made no immediate comment on whether it would follow Germany and others and interrupt the vaccinations with AstraZeneca’s vaccine.
At a recent day in the country’s largest vaccination center, at the Belgrade Fair, a sprawling exhibition complex in the Serbian capital, more than 7,000 people turned up for appointments.
Nearly all have received China’s Sinopharm vaccine, which according to clinical trials has an efficacy rate of 79 percent, lower than that of Western and Russian vaccines.
There were also a few booths offering the Pfizer vaccine and the Russian Sputnik V, but the Chinese offer was clearly much more.
What is available on any given day, says Dragana Milosevic, a doctor who oversees the injections, depending on deliveries from a central government.
“I never expected it to be that easy,” said Biljana Stankovic, a 37-year-old molecular biologist, waiting to be called into a vaccination cabinet. She added that she was not Mr. Vucic’s political views do not share, but ‘I am glad and surprised that everything is so well organized.’
With the exception of Hungary, the only other European country to embrace Sputnik V, European countries have committed themselves to the use of non-Western vaccines.
In Slovakia, the health minister was forced to resign last week over his decision to place an order for Sputnik V, which has been denounced by some co-ministers as a “tool for hybrid warfare”. Hungary is widely accused of breaking the ranks of the European Union and using Sputnik in Moscow.
Serbia welcomes the arrival of the European Union not only at home but also in the other states created by the collapse of Yugoslavia. Kosovo, which is raising its vaccine in hopes of helping the European bloc, has so far received no vaccines other than those provided by Serbia, which launched a vaccination program in ethnic Serbian enclaves but was ordered by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian government. to stop.
Bosnia has also received small deliveries of vaccines from Serbia, as well as northern Macedonia (formerly Macedonia), another difficult new state created after the fall of Yugoslavia.
The European Union’s vaccines have upset Serbs who believe their future lies with Europe, not Russia or China. “It failed at the most critical time,” said Zoran Radovanovic, a retired professor of epidemiology.
He said he hated the direction Mr. Vucic invaded the country by restricting media freedom and harassing critics. Mr. However, Radovanovic added: ‘Unlike so many other promises and false statements by Vucic, this is not just propaganda. Vaccinations are something real. We have it. ”