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Coronavirus pandemic

Russian Embassy in Zagreb gets increasingly frequent requests as to purchase of Sputnik V

A campaign to vaccinate the population against coronavirus was launched in Croatia on December 27, 2020

ZAGREB, February 11./TASS/. The Russian Embassy in Zagreb is getting increasingly frequent requests from residents of Croatia, including Russian nationals, as to a possibility to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus, embassy diplomats told TASS on Thursday.

"In view of a big number of questions coming from people living in Croatia about the purchase of the vaccine [Sputnik V], we say the following. Being a diplomatic mission, the Russian Embassy to Croatia cannot order, distribute and sell the vaccine within the framework of its competence," the embassy said.

"In order to bring any medicine into Croatia, corresponding permits are required from Croatia’s state agencies and responsible agencies of the European Union," it stressed. "However, we report that the embassy is ready to exert every effort towards stimulating bilateral dialogue and looking into the issue of delivering the Russian-made vaccine as early as possible, if Croatian authorities demonstrate the initiative," it added.

"Regretfully, there has been no official request as of yet from the Croatian side concerning the purchase of the Russian vaccine," it said.

A campaign to vaccinate the population against coronavirus was launched in Croatia on December 27, 2020. At the first stage, the country received a batch of 9,750 dozes of Pfeizer and BioNTech vaccines. Overall, the authorities have pre-ordered 5.9 million dozes of Pfizer and BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson&Johnson and CureVac coronavirus vaccines.

Croatia reports 236,709 coronavirus cases overall.

Russia on August 11 was the first country in the world to have registered a vaccine against the coronavirus, called Sputnik V, produced by the Gamaleya National Research Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology. Recently, the Lancet, one of the world's oldest and most respected medical journals, published interim results of a phase 3 trial of Sputnik V, confirming that the vaccine candidate "appears safe and effective".

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