March 26 (SeeNews) - North Macedonia will receive the first 24,000 doses of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine through the global COVAX vaccine sharing mechanism this week, health minister Venko Filipce said.
The shipment is expected to arrive in Skopje on March 28, Filipce said in Twitter post on Thursday.
The country plans to launch massive vaccination in April, when it expects to receive 200,000 doses of Chinese Sinopharm's coronavirus vaccine and a portion of the 200,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine that have been ordered for delivery, local news agency Telma quoted Filipce as saying earlier this week.
North Macedonia received 3,000 doses of Sputnik V vaccine earlier this month.
In February, the country received a donation of about 8,000 doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine from Serbia, delivered in two batches. The health authorities in North Macedonia started the immunisation on February 17 with those doses.
North Macedonia has reported 123,491 COVID-19 cases and 3,574 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.