Prague, May 20, (dpa/GNA) – Serbia plans to give the Czech Republic 100,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine free of charge.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis called it an “incredible gift,” in thanks posted on Twitter on Wednesday.
Babis welcomed the news after meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic at the end of a three-day visit to Prague.
A day earlier, Czech President Milos Zeman had personally apologized to Vucic for NATO airstrikes on Serbia in 1999.
NATO carried out air raids on what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to precipitate the end of the war in Kosovo. The assessment of the mission is still controversial today as it was not covered by a United Nations mandate.
Prague is still waiting for some 80,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine that were to be donated to the country in a gesture of solidarity by Slovenia, Austria and Hungary, according to a report by Seznamzpravy.cz, a news website. The doses are now expected at the end of June.
The Czech Republic had previously rejected an EU plan for the distribution of vaccines, and was not included when more doses were redistributed.
So far, the country of some 11 million people has given nearly 4.3 million doses of the shot, and more than 1.1 million people have been fully vaccinated.
Case numbers, meanwhile, are improving steadily. The Czech Republic has reported 63 new cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days.
GNA