KIEV, February 5. / TASS /. Ukraine will start a coronavirus vaccination campaign in mid-February and plans to complete it by the end of 2021. This was stated by the country's Minister of Health Maxim Stepanov, speaking in parliament on Friday.
"We will vaccinate our citizens [against coronavirus] with at least three or four vaccines starting in February. Free access to the vaccine will be made for everyone, without exception, and by the end of 2021 we want to complete the entire vaccination campaign," the head of the Ministry of Health said.
Stepanov said that the population categories at risk are planned to be vaccinated before the fall. "Almost 21 million citizens who are at risk, we must provide access to free vaccination by autumn. We will have all the opportunities for this," the minister assured. However, he admitted that the main problem in this direction is the reluctance of about half of the Ukrainian population to get vaccinated, as evidenced by the results of opinion polls.
In Ukraine, until February 28, an emergency regime is in effect, as well as a general quarantine. The country has not yet begun to vaccinate the population against coronavirus. Ukraine has abandoned the Russian drug Sputnik V and is negotiating with other vaccine manufacturers.
At the end of last year, the authorities announced the conclusion of an agreement for the supply of more than 1.9 million doses of vaccine to the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, the country expects to receive the first 700 thousand doses in February. Ukraine also expects the supply of vaccines under the international mechanism COVAX under the auspices of the World Health Organization: in mid-February, the country will receive 117 thousand doses of the drug from Pfizer, by the end of the second quarter of 2021, from 2.2 million to 3.7 million doses of vaccines will be supplied to the company Astrazeneca.
