March 29 (SeeNews) - North Macedonia received the first 24,000 doses of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine through the global COVAX vaccine sharing mechanism and an additional 3,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, health minister Venko Filipce said.
The vaccines arrived in Skopje in two separate shipments on Sunday, Filipce said on Twitter.
The country will launch massive immunization with the AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday, the health minister added.
The 3,000 Sputnik V doses will be administered as a second jab to health workers. North Macedonia received 3,000 doses of Sputnik V vaccine earlier this month.
The country expects to receive in April 200,000 doses of Chinese Sinopharm's coronavirus vaccine and a portion of the 200,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine that have been ordered for delivery, local news agency Telma quoted Filipce as saying last week.
In February, North Macedonia received a donation of about 8,000 doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine from Serbia, delivered in two batches. The health authorities in the country started the immunisation on February 17 with those doses.
North Macedonia, a country of about 2 million people, has reported 126,938 COVID-19 cases and 3,675 coronavirus-related deaths so far.
COVAX is a global initiative aimed at providing countries with equitable access to safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines, once they are licensed and approved.