Ukraine has registered 14,325 new cases of COVID-19, as well as 29,044 recoveries and 595 deaths in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Health Ministry said on Wednesday. “Over 13 million people have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine! Since the beginning of vaccination for COVID-19, more than 23 million shots have been administered in Ukraine. Over the past day, November 23, Ukraine has recorded 14,325 new cases of COVID-19 (including 1,183 children and 287 medical workers), while 286,121 people have been vaccinated for COVID-19, among them 86,299 who received their first shot and 199,822 who have completed their vaccination. In the past 24 hours, 4,077 people have been hospitalized, 595 have died, and 29,044 have recovered,” the ministry said on Telegram.Since the beginning of the pandemic, Ukraine has seen a total of 3,367,461 coronavirus infections, including 2,825,641 recoveries and 82,913 deaths.As of this date, 13,000,634 people have been vaccinated for COVID-19 in Ukraine, including 13,000,632 who have received the first shot and 10,225,182 who have been fully vaccinated. As many as 23,225,814 shots have been administered to date.
Ukrainian citizens who have received a full course of vaccination against coronavirus infection COVID-19 will be able to enter Ireland if they have supporting documents, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.“Ireland has become the ninth EU country left open for travel by Ukrainians. The conditions are full vaccination, a certificate of recovery or a negative PCR test. You still need to have a visa to travel to Ireland,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.All conditions of entry are available on the website of the Consular Service of Ukraine at: https://tripadvisor.mfa.gov.
Opponents of vaccination for COVID-19 are blocking traffic on Hrushevskoho Street and a number of other main streets in Kyiv adjacent to the area where the government is located on Wednesday.
Several hundred people are taking part in the protest, and none are wearing masks, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported from the site. The protesters demand lifting the quarantine restrictions and resuming regular classes in school, among other things, and they oppose the vaccine mandate.
The protesters began gathering near the Ukrainian parliament at 8:00 a.m., and more protesters are coming in.
Once traffic has been blocked, the protesters plan to hold a meeting near the building of the Verkhovna Rada.
Police are trying to persuade the protesters to unblock the streets for public transportation at the least.
Analysis of data from the e-health system (E-Health) will identify opponents of vaccination against COVID-19 among family doctors, Health Minister Viktor Liashko said.
“Regarding the doctors who discourage being vaccinated against COVID-19, and there are such, we will quickly identify them. The electronic health system will allow us to do this. With a greater increase in vaccination coverage, we will have low vaccination rates among those family doctors who do not trust the vaccine for some reason. We will have another conversation with them,” he said during an hour of questions to the government in the Verkhovna Rada on Friday.
Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko does not exclude that due to low rates of vaccination in Ukraine, European countries may limit entry for Ukrainian tourists as much as possible.
“Thousands, tens of thousands of disrupted trips, as countries are quickly changing the rules for entry. And there is logic in this. Their governments care about the safety of their citizens, maintain an appropriate level of vaccination. Yesterday I came across statistics of vaccinations in the world. European indicators are about 70%. In the UAE, practically the entire population is vaccinated – 98%. In Ukraine, this figure is 18%, which is very small,” he wrote on the Telegram channel on Thursday.
The minister lamented that the pace of vaccination in Ukraine may lead to the fact that citizens will not be able to actively travel abroad.
“Remember, in February 2020, our tourists were returning home from the Chinese Wuhan, already covered by the epidemic. They were taken for observation in Novi Sanzhary. Frightened people even threw stones at buses then … Of course, Europeans will not throw stones at Ukrainian tourists. Just do not exclude that with such a rate of vaccination, we may be restricted as much as possible from entering. And the restrictions will continue until we reach at least close to the European level of vaccination,” Tkachenko said.
In this regard, the minister once again urged everyone to be vaccinated.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky calls on the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy to intensify an information campaign on the importance of vaccinating citizens against coronavirus (COVID-19) disease.
According to the presidential press service, Zelensky made a statement during a conference call on countering the pandemic on Monday.
“All resources, available methods and sources must convey to various segments of the population about importance of protection against COVID-19. People who are vaccinated not only protect themselves from a severe course in case of illness, but they protect the environment, in particular their family members,” Zelensky said.
It is noted that during the meeting, the Health Ministry along with the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy was separately instructed to launch a campaign to vaccinate pensioners and also strengthen the information direction.
“Now in Ukraine, out of 11 million pensioners, about 25% are vaccinated. Volodymyr Zelensky suggested considering the possibility of involving business representatives to the aforementioned information campaign of Ukrposhta,” the press service said.
The special attention during the meeting was paid to the issue of combating the counterfeiting of certificates of negative PCR tests and certificates of vaccination. According to Chief of the National Police Ihor Klymenko, some 13 searches were carried out over the past week, some 12 criminal proceedings were initiated.
There is already the first court decision on the recovery of a fine in the amount of UAH 34,000 from a doctor from Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk region and deprivation of the right to work in the specialty for one year.
In addition, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the number of Ukrainians with COVID-19 continues to grow, in particular, some 64,606 COVID-19 cases were registered in the previous week, which is almost 20,000 more than a week earlier.
“To date, the dynamics of the development of the disease completely coincides with the previous peak of morbidity. Despite the fact that the growth of sick and hospitalized patients has slowed down somewhat, as of now, 22,500 beds are already occupied by people with confirmed COVID-19 and with suspicion,” the head of the government said.
He said that slightly less than 50% of the available places for COVID-19 patients are already occupied in Ukraine, but there are areas where the situation is of concern. According to the analysis of the Health Ministry, there are more infected in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv and Odesa regions. In total, there are 138,500 active patients in Ukraine today.
“The head of state has set the government the task of ensuring in the near future an increase in the number of beds in regions where there is a rapid increase in the incidence of coronavirus,” the office said.
COVID-19, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE, PRESIDENT ZELENSKY, VACCINATION
