The Albanian government has allocated about $20 million to acquiring COVID-19 vaccines from three international companies, according to an analysis conducted by Exit News.
Although the Albanian Ministry of Health has continuously reported the vaccine amounts arriving in the country over the past year, it has been less transparent about vaccine costs and other expenses related to the pandemic. Open Procurement platform, an organization promoting data transparency, has compiled the publicly available data on these purchases.
Based on this information, Albania has reached an agreement with Pfizer to acquire 499,590 vaccine doses for the price of $6 million ($12 dollars per unit), half of which was paid 30 days after the contract’s signature.
In January, ALL 430 million ($4.2 million) were used from the Budget Reserve Fund for 2021 to pay for this agreement with Pfizer.
In late March, the government announced that it had acquired about one million doses of the Sinovac vaccine through a Turkish supplier, Keymen Ilac Sanayi Ve Ticaret AS.
Albania paid $10 million for these doses.
As part of the COVAX program, Albania will be acquiring a total of 1,140,000 vaccine doses for the overall price of $3.9 million. The budget of the Ministry of Health and the Compulsory Health Insurance Fund will be used to pay for this amount. These doses are intended to cover the vaccination of about 20% of the population.
The $20 million amount does not include the agreement reached with SputnikV, for the 50,000 doses of the Sputnik vaccine.
The data compiled by Open Procurement also shows that at the beginning of the year, the Public Health Institution (ISHP) made an agreement with EUROMED, a medical supplier company, for the procurement of vaccine syringes. According to this information, the Treasury of ISHP has made 4 payments for a total of 14 379 000 ALL (about $140,000) toward EUROMED.
