The Agency for Medicinal Products of Bosnia and Herzegovina has approved the use of Russian coronavirus vaccine after establishing that the sample doses delivered last week met the prescribed quality criteria. This means that the inoculation of the population in that country could start in the coming days.

Two thousand doses of the Sputnik V vaccine had been delivered to Bosnia and Herzegovina seven days ago at the request of the Health Ministry of the Republika Srpska entity, which controls the Serb-dominated half othe country. The entity’s authorities had independently negotiated with the Russian manufacturer and agreed ‘in principle’ a delivery of 400,000 doses, which is sufficient to vaccinate 200,000 people.

The director of the RS Public Health Institute, Branislav Zeljkovic, said that after the quality testing of the sample doses had been done, he expected the distribution of the vaccine and for immunisation to start at the end of this week, or at the start of next week.

Bosnia and Herzegovina had preordered 1.23 million doses of vaccine from Western manufacturers via the COVAX mechanism, but none of them have been delivered yet. Authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina hope that they will still receive the first doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine by the end of February so that they can finally start rolling them out.