All family doctors will be vaccinated against COVID-19 through vaccination rooms, which will open from next week, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said.
“Next week we will open vaccination rooms. All family doctors will be vaccinated against COVID-19 through these rooms,” he said on the Freedom of Speech (Svoboda Slova) program on ICTV on Tuesday night.
According to the national vaccination plan, at least nine mobile vaccination teams per region should work now, but these plans are not being implemented in the field, Stepanov said.
“Local authorities were supposed to reach not 10,000, but more than 12,000-14,000 vaccinations per day. The mobile team did not come here, they did not vaccinate there – this is how they deploy in the field,” he said.
Nevertheless, Stepanov said that in the coming days the rate of vaccination will accelerate and will reach more than 10,000 vaccinations per day.
“Today there was a rather tough conversation, including with some heads of regions,” he said.
Stepanov also said that 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca (Covishield) vaccine should be delivered to Ukraine by March 31. The Ministry of Health expects permission for their export from the Government of India.
As reported, the first batch of 500,000 doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca (Covishield) vaccine was delivered to Ukraine on the morning of February 23.
Oxford/AstraZeneca is produced at the facilities of the Serum Institute (India) and has the local (trade) name Covishield. It was registered for emergency use in Ukraine on Monday, February 22.
In addition, Ukraine received confirmation of deliveries of 2.2-3.7 million doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines under COVAX mechanism in the first-second quarter of 2021. In addition, this vaccine will be purchased directly from the manufacturers for public funds.
Ukraine has also signed additional direct contracts for the supply of vaccines against COVID-19, developed with the participation of AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden) and NovaVax (USA) and manufactured at the facilities of the Serum Institute (India).
Almost 18.9 million persons signed declarations with family doctors in the primary healthcare reform, Deputy Health Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Kovtonyuk has said. Speaking at the seminar entitled “The First Results of Healthcare Reform: the Experience of the Regions” at the Public Health international exhibition in Kyiv, he reported, referring to the data of the National Health Service of Ukraine that at present, about 45% of Ukrainians are registered with family doctors. At the same time, Kovtonyuk said that “Kyiv is an almost complete outsider in the number of declarations” – 1.149 million declarations were signed in Kyiv, which is below the national average.
At the same time, in the leading cities of the reform declarations were signed by up to 73% of the population, in particular, in Chervonohrad (Lviv region). In Ovruch (Zhytomyr region) declarations were signed by 68% of residents, Vinnytsia and Pokrovsk (Donetsk region) – 65% each, Novohrad-Volynsky (Zhytomyr region) – 63%, Nikopol (Dnipropetrovsk region) and Pervomaisk (Mykoklaiv region) – 61% each.
The primary healthcare institutions which have switched to a new mechanism for financing services after the first stage of signing agreements with the National Health Service of Ukraine received UAH 819.8 million in July-September 2018. In particular, UAH 266.8 million was sent to 30 healthcare institutions of Kyiv. Kovtonyuk said that residents of rural areas more active in signing declaration with family doctors compared with urban residents.
