EU donates vaccines, mass immunization starts

North Macedonia started its mass coronavirus vaccination campaign on Tuesday as the European Union delivered thousands of doses to the small Balkan country.

The nation has struggled with supply shortages, and only about 4% of the 2.1 million population has received a first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine.

That inoculation drive is expected to intensify in the next weeks and months after the European Union's Enlargement commissioner Oliver Varhelyi presented about 5,000 Pfizer-BioNTech doses at the sports centre "Boris Trajkovski" in the capital Skopje.

The delivery is part of a batch of 120,000 the 27-nation bloc will donate to the country by the end of August.

The vaccines are funded from the 70 million euros ($84 million) package adopted by the European Commission in December to help cover the cost of vaccines, secured under the EU's advance purchase agreements for the Western Balkan partners.

Health Minister Venko Filipce says the government now hopes to deliver about 15,000 shots daily, up from about 2,000 earlier.

North Macedonia started its vaccination drive on Tuesday with 200,000 doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine.

Despite North Macedonia having high infection rates, the government relaxed restrictions for Orthodox Easter last weekend and next month's holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which is observed by the country's predominantly Muslim ethnic Albanian minority.

As of Tuesday, North Macedonia had recorded nearly 153,000 confirmed cases and about 5,000 deaths.