Vaccine diplomacy: west falling behind in race for influence Michael Safi in Beirut and Milivoje Pantovic in Belgrade © Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Agustin Marcarian/Reuters
“Today it is easier to get a nuclear weapon than to get a vaccine,” the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, declared in January. He was bragging. The Balkans country had just received its first shipment of almost 1m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Sinopharm, a state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company.
Since then, Serbia has augmented its stockpile with tens of thousands of shots of Russia’s Sputnik V, signed an agreement to build a bottling plant for the Russian vaccine and now boasts the fastest vaccination rate in continental Europe.
Covid-19 news: 95 per cent of over 70s in Great Britain given vaccine
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Vaccine diplomacy: west falling behind in race for influence
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