From: Die Morina van Uijtregt
Kosovo Expects First Anti- COVID-19 Vaccines in February

The outgoing Prime Minister of Kosovo, Avdullah Hoti said that the first vaccines against COVID- 19 are expected to arrive in February.

During a press conference on Wednesday, Hoti said that the government allocated 40 million euro to secure these vaccines.

“Yesterday, 535 thousand vaccines were secured from Pifzer, 600 thousand vaccines with Austria, 720 thousand with COVAX. 40 million euros have been allocated for the anti-Covid-19 vaccines,” Hoti said.

He added that those to be vaccinated first are the health system workers and citizens older than 65 years.

According the outgoing Prime Minister, 20 thousand persons are planned to be vaccinated in one day.

Through a Facebook post, the Minister of Health Armend Zemaj said that the confirmation for the provision of vaccines was given to them by the representatives of Pfizer during a virtual meeting held on Tuesday.

“As we have announced before, the Ministry of Health has been engaged for months in many ways to provide the vaccine against COVID-19, in order to meet the obligations we have to citizens and protect their public health. The Government of Kosovo and the Ministry of Health remain committed to providing protection to our citizens through comprehensive vaccination against Covid-19,” Zemaj wrote.

“Vaccines will be provided for all groups of the population that should be covered by vaccination according to the projections of the National Institute of Public Health of Kosovo. The vaccine against COVID-19 will be given for free to the citizens of our country”, he said.

Kosovo is listed among the countries that will receive 20% of the COVID-19 vaccine for free through the global GAVI-COVAX alliance.

On December 7, Minister Zemaj signed the application for the provision of this amount of anti-COVID-19 vaccine.

On the other side, the director of the National Institute of Public Health of Kosovo, Naser Ramadani said that each vaccinated person will be provided with an immunization card.