
Pulmologist Dejan Zujovic warned on Thursday that Serbia had lost the battle to vaccinate the population and allowed the pandemic to develop.
“I am not an optimist. We lost the battle for vaccination because our actions were inadequate at certain moments… We lost the opportunity because of a lack of education, arrogance, lack of care and caring only for our own personal interests,” the doctor, an outspoken critic of the authorities, told Novi Magazin weekly.
Novi Magazin recalled that less than 40 percent of the population of Serbia has been innoculated.
He said the vaccination campaign was unsuccessful because the anti-vaxers had gone on a rampage and because the vaccination was part of President Aleksandar Vucic’s political marketing. “We heard politicians say that they got the vaccine, I got it, the president secured it, the prime minister met the plane… Vaccination is a national process, not a political campaign but because the president and prime minister are constantly campaigning they decided to continue through the vaccination process which had a very bad outcome,” he said.
The Serbian authorities have been actively campaigning since the start of the pandemic, assuring the public that Vucic personally and his associates had procured hospital ventilators and millions of doses of vaccine and downplaying any criticism. The authorities have also campaigned in favor of vaccination, allowing nationals of neighboring countries to come to Serbia for inoculation and have made gifts of vaccine to countries in the region.
The regime has been fiercely criticized for its decisions during the pandemic, starting from attempts to downplay how serious it is initially, to the imposing of a state of emergency which the opposition said was done illegally and to the lack of transparency in the procuring of vaccine and medical supplies whose costs the authorities have not revealed. Some critics have claimed that the authorities used the pandemic to raise the prices of disinfectants, face masks, gloves and other products which were in high demand.
Dr Zujovic warned the public not to rely on anyone who is not an expert, especially not people appointed by Vucic who, he added, named obedient figures to the crisis response team.