President Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday that Serbia will build a factory with the United Arab Emirates and China to make the Sinopharm vaccine.

Speaking during a visit to the UAE, he said that the plant would start making the vaccine as of October 15. “I have already told our people to start looking for land, outside Belgrade would be best, to build the factory which will make two to three million doses of vaccine a month to cover a good part of the region and all of our needs,” he said.

According to Vucic, there is mention of a third dose. “We will have to get vaccinated every year and the vaccines we chose, Russian and Chinese, are absolutely safe,” he said and added: “we will have to give vaccines to the region even at production cost because everything we do to cure our people or prevent infection will be no good if there is a problem in the region”. “Vaccination is a key issue for the security of the country. Nothing is more important than saving our grandmas and grandpas and that is also an economic issue because every lockdown day costs 190 million dollars,” he said. Vucic said that not nearly enough people had been vaccinated in Serbia.

The president said that a deal would be signed in the next two weeks for what he said would be a greenfield investment.