North Macedonia gets first batch of vaccines

North Macedonia on Sunday received its first batch of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines through the COVAX intiative.

A shipment of 24,000 doses landed at the country's main airport near the capital Skopje.

The first batch of vaccines was welcomed by the nation's health minister Venko Filipce along with the U.S. and EU's ambassadors to the country.

Filipce said the first 20,000 people who will be immunized with this shipment would be those over 75 and chronically ill.

The vaccination process will start from Wednesday next week.

North Macedonia has been struggling with shortages of vaccines and has barely started its mass vaccination drive.

The tiny Balkan country begun administrating vaccinations a month ago with about 11,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Russian Sputnic V.

The first who got the jabs were medical workers.

As of Saturday, North Macedonia had recorded more than 126,000 coronavirus cases and more than 3,600 deaths.