Another 50,000 doses of the Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V arrived in Serbia on Tuesday, with 500,000 doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine expected on Wednesday, the authorities in Belgrade said on Tuesday.

With one million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine already delivered, the next shipment will ensure the vaccination of 750,000 people in Serbia.

President Aleksandar Vucic told a special press conference that the 500,000 doses of the Chinese vaccine were already in a ‘Serbian warehouse in China’. According to him, this vaccine will put Serbia on top among European countries with the largest number of people vaccinated against Covid-19 by the end of February.

By 22 February, Serbia also expects to receive 88,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and between 125,000 and 150,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Serbia has so far vaccinated over 537,000 people against Covid-19 and 21,000 of them have received a second shot. Vucic said that the administration of second shots would continue on Thursday or Friday.

The country’s Covid-19 response team said on Tuesday that there would be no easing of the restrictions in place, noting that the rise in the number of cases was the result of people returning from their winter holidays on mountains like Kopaonik and Zlatibor and the new strain of the virus detected in the United Kingdom.

The health authorities on Tuesday reported 2,104 new coronavirus cases after 12,830 tests done in the last 24 hours and 15 deaths. Currently, 3,814 Covid-19 patients are receiving hospital treatment and 129 of them are on ventilators.

Since the start of the epidemic in the country on 6 March 2020, over 2.7 milion people have been tested for the novel virus and 411,855 of them turned out to be positive. The death toll has reached 4,154.