President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky was vaccinated against coronavirus (COVID-19), the head of state said on his Instagram page.
“Doctors and military personnel are already being vaccinated. I urge all others to join the Diia queue. There is nothing to be afraid of, I am setting my own example,” the president said on Tuesday.
On Twitter, Zelensky said that he was vaccinated on the front line with Ukrainian soldiers as commander-in-chief.
“The same Oxford/AstraZeneca (Covishield) from India, which was delivered first to Ukraine, and which received millions of people around the world. The vaccine will allow us to live again without restrictions,” he said.
More than 3,000 people have been vaccinated from COVID-19 in Ukraine, Deputy Minister of Health Yaroslav Kucher said during a press briefing in Kyiv on Monday.
“Recently, more than 3,000 people have been vaccinated in Ukraine. Vaccination is carried out in a cascade way, that is, in the near future, one should expect that the number of vaccinated people will significantly increase,” he said.
At the same time, Kucher urged Ukrainians not to believe fakes about vaccinations and to receive information from reliable sources, in particular from the Ministry of Health.
Only 39% of Ukrainian citizens have expressed readiness to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus if such a vaccine becomes available at local pharmacies, and 56% are not ready to do so, according to the results of a public opinion survey carried out by the Rating Sociological Group between January 14 and January 16, 2021.
Forty-three percent of respondents said they will be ready to be vaccinated if it is free of charge, and 52% of those polled expressed the opposite opinion. The majority of those who oppose vaccination are people from the age group between 30 and 49, women, residents of small towns, and those who are not afraid of contracting the disease, the poll findings show.
By comparison, 55% of Ukrainians supported free vaccination in November 2020. Meanwhile, the number of those who are ready to pay for the vaccine has slightly grown.
Fifty-one percent of respondents backed the strengthening of quarantine measures, including the lockdown, from January 8 to January 24, down from 56% in December, and 46% of those polled disapproved of the aforementioned steps.
At the same time, 40% of respondents believe that the lockdown will help curb the spread of the disease (52% in December), and 55% took the opposite view. One-third of those who support the lockdown said they do not consider it to be effective.
Sixteen percent of respondents said they had had COVID-19 or were suffering from it at the moment, 80% of those polled said they had not had COVID-19, and 4% could not answer the question.
As compared with previous such surveys, the latest poll shows that the respondents were considerably less worried by the fact that they themselves or their relatives might contract the virus. This figure stands at 40% in January, down from 57% in November. Seventy-eight percent of respondents to the latest survey expressed concern that their relatives and friends might contract the disease, as compared to 87% in November. The respondents who expressed the greatest concern on this matter were the elderly and women.
The poll, using the Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview method, took place between January 14 and January 16 and surveyed 1,600 respondents aged 18 and up.
Head of the parliamentary committee on the health of the nation, medical care and health insurance Mykhailo Radutsky has named those who will be the first to be vaccinated against coronavirus in Ukraine for free.
“The first wave is doctors, the military, police. Doctors are mandatory. First of all, these are medical workers, these are the military, this is the police, this is the National Guard and the elderly from the risk group,” Radutsky said on the air of the Right to Power (Pravo na Vladu) program on 1 + 1 TV channel.
According to him, 4 million Ukrainians can already be vaccinated for free on COVAX.
In turn, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko said that as many as 25,000 people fell ill with coronavirus among law enforcement officers, of whom 78 people died.
