After his meeting with opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski today, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev was asked about the failure of his regime to provide vaccines and the allegations of corruption. Zaev insisted that the entire region is facing a shortage of vaccines and claimed that he has lined up 2,6 million doses. So far, Macedonia has received only 8,000 Pfizer vaccines as a donation from Serbia, 6,000 Sputnik V doses and 24,000 Astra Zeneca through the Covax mechanism – most of which arrived only yesterday.

We tried working with private companies but we were accused of doing secret deals, Zaev said, talking about the scandal when his Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce tried using a shell company to buy Sinopharm vaccines, prompting the Chinese manufacturer to withdraw from the deal. “We have ordered 800,000 doses through Covax, 800,000 Pfizer vaccines, 200,000 from China and Russia each, 100,000 from Europe and 500,000 through an oral agreement with China planned for May”, Zaev insisted.

He acknowledged that his regime is shaken by the scenes over the weekend, which are spilling into the week – of thousands of Macedonian citizens going to Serbia to look for vaccines.

We have nothing against our people going to a friendly neighboring country to take vaccines. We welcome the friendly virtue of friendly Serbia. It would have been better if they took the vaccine here, but there is a problem in the entire world with the lack of vaccines, except for Serbia, Zaev said.