Serbia’s offer of free vaccines produced both in the West and East is attracting foreign visitors seeking jabs that are not available in their own countries.
The distance between Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, and St Petersburg in Russia is 1,806 km – but that did not stop a Russian family from traveling all that way to get Pfizer-BioNtech vaccines, BalkanInsight reports.
Anastacia, 45, and Khalid, 50, along with their 17-year-old daughter, Jasmine, reached Serbia on Thursday last week and took rooms in a hotel in Belgrade.
They received COVID-19 jabs soon after arrival and were sitting in the rest area of the Belgrade Fair vaccination centre when they told BIRN the reasons behind their epic journey.
“Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine is not accepted everywhere, unfortunately. Whenever we want to go somewhere, we are asked for one of the four vaccines officially approved [internationally], like Pfizer, Moderna and Astra Zeneca,” Khalid explained.
“We are very glad we got Pfizer today and grateful to the Serbian government that allowed us to do this,” he added.
“The hotel staff explained the procedure to us. Everything was very professional and set up properly, and we had no problems at all,” Jasmine said.
This Russian family is far from the only one coming to Serbia these days from afar for vaccination.
More and more foreigners are coming for the same reason, not only from Russia but from Western Europe, South America and even distant New Zealand and Australia, health workers at the Belgrade Fair vaccination centre and tourist officials told BIRN.
The reason is that Serbia is one of the few countries in the world that offers four types of vaccine – Pfizer/BionTech and AstraZeneca but also China’s Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V.
