Ukraine will receive a part of the vaccines from the United States through the COVAX program, which will be transferred as part of the U.S. plans to purchase and transport 500 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine press service said. “About a month ago President [Joe] Biden announced that he will purchase another 500 million additional doses of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines to contribute to Covax, which is the facility that is sharing these vaccines around the world, including with Ukraine,” the embassy said in the statement.
As noted, the USAID agency located in Ukraine will set up distribution networks and “cold chain” networks that allow the vaccine to be fully ready to go.
“The United States is the largest global contributor to the Covax Facility. We have given over $4 billion to that facility to help distribute vaccines around the world,” the embassy’s press office said.
At the same time, the U.S. government plans to continue to cooperate with Ukraine and other countries to reduce the level of coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in the world.
Ukraine has registered a vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19) Janssen manufactured by Johnson & Johnson.
According to the Center for Public Health and the Health Ministry, the vaccine was registered for emergency medical use on July 2.
At the same time, it is specified that one dose of Janssen vaccine is sufficient for complete immunization.
The vaccine is approved for emergency use by WHO. The United States, Great Britain, the European Union, Switzerland, Canada and other countries have also given permission to use it.
This is a vector vaccine developed by Janssen, owned by Johnson&Johnson. It requires a storage temperature from minus two to plus eight degrees Celsius.
The decline in the incidence of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Ukraine is slowing down, but there is currently no high risk of an increase, experts from Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) have said.
“The situation with the incidence in Ukraine continues to decline in terms of the number of detected cases. At the same time, the decline rate is slowing down,” Head of KSE Center for Health Economics Yuriy Hanychenko said during an online presentation of an analysis of the situation with the spread of COVID-19.
At the same time, he said that an outbreak of the disease in the country is possible in July-August – everything will depend on how the situation with the spread of the British, South African and Indian strains of the virus will develop in Ukraine.
“However, in the next week or two, we do not expect a significant increase in the incidence,” Hanychenko said.
According to him, the average daily number of deaths in Ukraine continues to decline and amounts to 31 deaths per day.
“The number of hospitalizations has stopped declining and reached a plateau. This may be the result of a long weekend. At the same time, discharges continue to exceed hospitalizations by more than 1.5 times. The number of patients with COVID-19 is reduced by 20% per week. This week, there was an increase in the level of hospitalizations in Luhansk region by over 60%, but this growth was technical,” Hanychenko said.
At the same time, he noted that three regions need to increase the number of tests.
“In Kyiv, Luhansk and Khmelnytsky regions, the level of testing is falling. It is very dangerous due to the fact that the Delta strain was detected in Ukraine last week. In Kyiv and Luhansk regions, along with the reduction in testing, the detection rate is growing,” Hanychenko said.
KSE said that Ukraine needs to triple the pace of vaccination in order to reach the European level.
“The pace of vaccination in Ukraine is increasing – by a third over the past week. Thanks to this, the lag behind the average European pace of vaccination has decreased, but it still remains high [by three times]. Ukraine needs to triple the pace, there is a vaccine for this,” Hanychenko said.
He said that currently in Ukraine about 62,000 people are vaccinated on average per day. To vaccinate 70% of the population of Ukraine, it is necessary to vaccinate more than 225,000 people daily.
Over the past day, June 29, some 81,637 people were vaccinated against the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Ukraine, while 21,475 Ukrainians received the first dose of the vaccine, and 60,162 received the second, the press service of the Ministry of Health reports. “Some 81,637 people were vaccinated against COVID-19 per day on June 29, 2021. Some 21,475 people received the first dose, and 60,162 people were fully immunized. Some 518 mobile teams, 1,336 vaccination points, and two vaccination centers worked during the day,” the ministry said on Telegram.
It is noted that as of June 29, 2021, some 756,424 people were on the waiting list for vaccination against COVID-19.
“Since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, 1.934 million people have been vaccinated, of which 1.933.944 received the first dose, and 649,524 people were fully immunized and received two doses [two of them received the first dose abroad]. A total of 2.583 million vaccinations were carried out,” the Ministry of Health said.
The COVID-19 certificate can be implemented from July 1 and will be valid for up to 180 days, Director General of the Center for Public Health Roman Rodyna has said.
“Now we are working out a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers, which will determine the conditions for issuing a COVID-19 certificate. We hope that it will available from July 1,” he said on the YouTube channel on Friday.
Rodyna named three reasons for issuing such a certificate. In particular, it will be issued if a person has received a full course of vaccination. In this case, the document will be valid for 180 days.
In addition, a negative PCR test will be the basis for issuing a certificate. In this case, its validity period is 72 hours from the moment of taking the sample.
The certificate will also be issued if a person has been ill with COVID-19 and the relevant confirmed laboratory data have been entered into eHealth. In this case, the certificate will be valid for 180 days from the date of receipt of laboratory confirmation of the disease.
Rodyna said, the question of whether these certificates will allow entry to other countries will be decided by bilateral agreements between the countries.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has taken a number of measures to counter the Delta strain coronavirus, in particular, foreigners and stateless persons over 12 years of age arriving in the country from India, the U.K. and Northern Ireland, the Russian Federation and Portugal are obliged to do antigen tests, according to a posting on the website of the Ministry of Health with reference to Deputy Minister of Health, Chief State Sanitary Doctor Ihor Kuzin.
