Azerbaijan, both domestically and in the international arena, took prompt action to combat this common misfortune. The number of laboratories has been increased – almost eight times in a short time. More than 10 new modern hospitals were built in a short time, including modular ones. Thus, we have provided more than 10,000 beds for COVID patients, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev addressing a session of the Council of Heads of State of the Commonwealth of Independent States held in the format of a video conference, Eurasia Diary reports citing Trend .

“Also, a general problem was the problem of a shortage of doctors, because no healthcare system was designed for such a high number of patients. We, having promptly conducted negotiations with our colleagues, invited doctors from five countries – Italy, China, Cuba, Russia and Turkey," he said.

"This helped us a lot in treating our patients. An amount of almost $2.5 billion was allocated from the state budget to combat the pandemic and to provide financial support to the categories of our citizens affected as a result of the fact that many sectors of the economy were excluded from economic activity. Financial support measures have covered about 5 million citizens of Azerbaijan, which is half of our population," said the president.

"Now, when the vaccination process begins in the world, we are also involved in these activities. For many of the past months, negotiations were held with leading vaccine manufacturers such as Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Moderna, Pfizer BioNTech. I also want to note that Azerbaijan was one of the first countries to join the international COVAX initiative on equitable access of countries to vaccines with the participation of WHO,” the head of state said.