Chief Medical Officer discloses who to be first to get COVID-19 vaccinated in Ukraine

Ukrainian Deputy Health Minister, Chief Medical Officer Viktor Liashko says that healthcare workers will be the first to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in Ukraine.

He announced this during the 'Right to Power' talk show, according to the TV news service TSN.

Read alsoChina's Sinovac applies for registration of COVID-19 vaccine in Ukraine

"Who will get it [first]? These will definitely be healthcare workers. Because Ukraine has decided to start a vaccination campaign with healthcare workers to protect those people who are on the front line with the coronavirus from day one. I believe that any healthcare worker today is a hero and he or she could become the one who would get the first shot. And then we will not have to decide who deserves more or who deserves less," he said.

He also assured that Ukrainians would be vaccinated against the coronavirus with vaccines that will be recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and will undergo registration in Ukraine.

"We will not comment on the effectiveness [of vaccines]. If a vaccine is registered as an immunobiological medication, it is ready to be used and it protects us from a severe course of an infectious disease. Therefore, all vaccines that will be used are safe, effective and will safeguard our citizens against a severe course of coronavirus disease," he said, adding that only safe vaccines will be used during the vaccination campaign.

COVID-19 vaccine for Ukraine

• Ukraine plans to launch a COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the middle of February 2021. The first stage is expected to take about 20 days when healthcare workers who have contacts with COVID-19 patients will get vaccinated.
• On December 30, 2020, Ukraine signed a contract for the supply of 1.9 million doses of China's Sinovac vaccine.
• On January 30, 2021, Ukrainian Deputy Health Minister, Chief Medical Officer Viktor Liashko said Ukraine would receive 117,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine within the COVAX (the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility) in February.
• From the middle of February to the end of June 2021, Ukraine will obtain 2.2 million to 3.7 million doses of an AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine.
• On February 5, Health Minister Stepanov said shipments of 12 million doses of vaccines produced by AstraZeneca and Novavax to Ukraine had been confirmed.
• In December 2020, the Health Ministry's coronavirus task force approved a COVID-19 immunization plan under which at least 50% of Ukrainians (20 million people) are to be vaccinated during 2021-2022.