10,000 AstraZeneca vaccines donated by Croatia are set to be delivered to North Macedonia on Friday, while 10,000 Sputnik jabs are expected to arrive in the country next week.
Pfizer, Sinovac and Sinopharm shots are currently administered at vaccination centers nationwide. Nearly 335,000 citizens have been vaccinated against COVID-19 thus far, of who 223,000 have been fully immunized.
In the past 24 hours, five new COVID-19 cases were recorded out of 2,531 test conducted. In the same period, 86 patients recovered and one died, the Ministry of Health said on Thursday.
The majority of active cases are registered in Skopje (60), followed by Tetovo, Kichevo, Ohrid and Kumanovo. According to Thursday’s statistics, there are no active cases in 17 cities across the country.
Minister of Health Venko Filipche said on Thursday that the number of new COVID-19 cases continues to drop, but authorities are carefully monitoring the situation due to the spread of the Indian variant in several countries.
The spread of the virus, he added, can be prevented if citizens refrain from group gatherings and abide by measures recommended by the Commission for Infectious diseases.
The Minister also said that it’s too early to allow indoor nightclubs to reopen, underlining that they’ll probably remain closed over the summer.
Vaccination, along with abiding by measures, are the only ways to defeat the pandemic, Filipche added, noting that vaccines will protect the population and soften the blow of a possible coronavirus wave in the fall.
“It’s just a matter of time when the Indian variant will become dominant in Europe. Therefore, it’s crucial that as many people as possible get vaccinated while the epidemiological situation is stable. There are enough vaccines, all safe and efficient. Latest EMA data shows that vaccines are also efficient against the new variants, which gives us a lot of hope,” Filipche wrote in a Facebook post.
Since the onset of the epidemic in February 2020, a total of 155,689 COVID-19 cases have been registered in North Macedonia. 150,063 patients have recovered, while 5,485 died. There are 141 active cases nationwide.
