The Albanian government has issued today a normative act, according to which the Minister of Health Ogerta Manatirliu and the Minister of State for Reconstruction Arben Ahmetaj are authorized “to conduct negotiations with manufacturers, authorized distributors, governments or institutions authorized by them, from countries that produce or distribute anti-covid vaccines, to provide these vaccines, which are certified by the proper bodies of the countries where they are produced.” While until now the Albanian government has followed closely the rules and regulations of the European Union regarding the approval of the vaccines, through this new move the Albanian government can start without any further delay the negotiations to bring the Russian and Chinese vaccines.
In the last weeks, Prime Minister Rama had given some signals that perhaps Albania would turn to other sources of anti-covid vaccines to enable the start of a massive vaccination process. Even during the joint conference in Brussels with Borrell and Várhelyi held in the beginning of March, Prime Minister Rama said that his government was looking beyond the “desirable sources of vaccine,” a declaration that pushed many media to doubt whether Albania was already in contact with China or Russia for their vaccines.
So far the vaccination process in Albania has continued with a slow rhythm, especially comparing to Serbia, which has already approved the Russian and Chinese vaccines. According to Reuters, “Serbia has administered at least 1,792,912 doses of COVID vaccines so far,” or around 12.9% of the population, assuming that every person needs 2 doses. Albania at the other hand has administered 21,613 vaccination, less than 0.5% of the country’s population.
