Serbia is the first country in Europe that will produce the Russian Sputnik V anti-COVID-19 vaccine after the Russian side confirmed the quality of samples produced in a test run and the first delivery of the vaccine from the Torlak Institute in Belgrade could be available in two to three weeks.

The Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology has confirmed the quality of the vaccine produced in the test run at Torlak and has officially approved the production of Sputnik V in Belgrade, Serbia's minister on the intergovernmental commission for cooperation with Russia, Nenad Popović, confirmed to the Serbia national broadcaster RTS on Thursday.

It was Popovic who on 14 April, when the test run was conducted at Torlak Institute, announced that production could begin on 20 May and in the meantime laboratory analysis needed to be completed to compare the Serbian-made vaccine with the original produced at the Gamaleya Institute.

Popovic told RTS that Gamaleya had issued the Serbian team a licence for the production of Sputnik V and commended Serbia for being the first to conduct the test run.

“Eighteen parameters of the vaccine were tested as the basis for the decision,” said Popovic.

Serbia is conducting a massive inoculation campaign and is administering the Sputnik V, Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and China's Sinopharm vaccines, with Sinopharm so far delivering the largest quantity of doses – at least 4 million.

In the last shipment of the Sinopharm vaccine, of 440,000 doses, 200,000 were a donation from the Chinese army to the Serbian army.

To date, 4,168,545 doses have been administered in Serbia.