About 30% of adult Ukrainians have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, Health Minister Viktor Liashko has said.
“A record daily number of 291,293 COVID-19 vaccine shots have been administered in Ukraine today. Owing to this, we have reached the figure of 30% of the adult population who have been vaccinated with at least one dose,” Liashko said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
Ukraine is using COVID-19 vaccines approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), and over 9 million vaccine doses are currently available at vaccination stations across the country, he said.
“We have vaccine supplies planned week by week for the period up to the end of the year. These include both vaccines procured using state budget funds and those shipped to the country owing to its participation in the global COVAX mechanism,” he said.
In line with the contracts concluded for the vaccine, Ukraine should receive another 13.4 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine marketed under the tradename of Comirnaty by the end of 2021. Additionally, the shipment of 5.45 million vaccine doses under the COVAX program in 2021 has also been confirmed, he said.
“Thus, the overall number of vaccine doses Ukraine is expected to receive by the end of 2021 is 18.85 million,” Liashko said.
Ukraine is not considering the supply of Johnson & Johnson’s anti-COVID vaccine, negotiations with the company are not underway, Deputy Minister of Health, Chief Sanitary Doctor Ihor Kuzin said.
“Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine supply is not currently being considered and supply negotiations are currently not held,” he told reporters on Monday.
Kuzin said that the vaccine manufacturer “is not proactively communicating.”
“The communication mechanisms that we have used have so far been ineffective,” he said.
As reported, in July 2021, Ukraine registered a vector vaccine against COVID-19 Janssen manufactured by Johnson & Johnson. One dose of Janssen vaccine is sufficient for a complete immunization. It requires a storage temperature of +2 to +8 degrees Celsius.
Earlier, 500 doses of Janssen vaccine were delivered to Ukraine in compliance with the procedure for importing unregistered medicines for vaccination of employees of a private company, which paid its cost, organized delivery and ensured compliance with the temperature regime. Employees of this company work in Alaska in the fishing industry and had to be vaccinated with a U.S.-certified vaccine in order to be allowed into this country.
Almost 88.2% of Ukrainian teachers have already received one dose of the vaccine against the COVID-19 coronavirus infection, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine said.
“As of today, October 25, 2021, at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccination was received by 88.2% of employees of general secondary education institutions, almost 400,000 teachers across the country were vaccinated with two doses,” the Ministry of Education said.
It is reported, that the highest level of vaccination is demonstrated by: Mykolaiv region – 98%, Kyiv region – 95.5%, Kharkiv region – 94.6%, Donetsk region – 92.7%, Khmelnytsky region – 91.6% (full and incomplete vaccination cycle). At the same time, the vaccination threshold of 80% of school workers has not been reached only in Rivne region.
The ministry reports that 8,000 schools are on vacation since October 25. In the regions caught in “red” zones of epidemic danger, there are schools on vacation or distance learning that have not reached the vaccination rate of 100%. In Odesa region there are 149 schools, in Donetsk region – 93, in Zaporizhia region – 47.
Almost 81% of teachers in Ukraine have already received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, Minister of Education and Science Serhiy Shkarlet said.
“Today, 81% of school workers have already been vaccinated with at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Over the past five days, the number of teachers vaccinated with the first dose in Lviv region has increased by 18%, by almost 14% in Dnipropetrovsk region,” Shkarlet wrote in his Telegram channel.
According to him, 67.9% of teachers passed the full vaccination cycle in Luhansk region, in Cherkasy region – 64%, in Poltava region – 62.8%, in the city of Kyiv – 62.6%, in Sumy region – 59.7%. At the same time, the minister says that Kherson, Rivne and Odesa regions have not yet demonstrated tangible progress in vaccination rates.
Ukraine is negotiating with the governments of states and manufacturers of the Moderna vaccine on the supply of this drug to Ukraine, the Ministry of Health has told Interfax-Ukraine.
“The Ministry of Health and the government of Ukraine are negotiating both with the governments of the countries and with the manufacturers of vaccines regarding the possible supply of these drugs to Ukraine,” the Ministry of Health said.
The department reported that as of August 24, there were 805,652 doses of Moderna vaccine in warehouses in Ukraine.
The ministry clarified that the available Moderna vaccine will be used mainly for vaccination with the second dose of citizens who were vaccinated with the first dose.
As of August 24, there are more than 11 million vaccines from various manufacturers in national, regional and local warehouses.
Experts from Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) recommend the Ministry of Health of Ukraine to reduce the interval between the first and second doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from 12 weeks to eight-four weeks.
“We recommend that the Health Ministry’s expert group should decide to reduce the interval between the first and second doses of AstraZeneca vaccine and accept the relevant recommendation from the Australian technical group. It suggests that it is advisable to reduce the interval to four-eight weeks during the period of an outbreak risk,” Head of the KSE Center for Health Care Economics Yuriy Hanychenko said during an online presentation of an analysis of the situation with the spread of COVID-19 on Tuesday.
Recent studies have shown a decrease in the effectiveness of one dose of AstraZeneca against the delta strain, he said, while two doses show similar effectiveness as against other strains.
“With a significant risk of an outbreak in Ukraine, those vaccinated with only one dose will receive little protection. This risk does not outweigh the benefit of the potential increase in efficacy with a second dose after 12 weeks,” Hanychenko said.
He also noted that a number of countries, in particular the United Kingdom and Australia, have already reduced the interval between the two doses.
In addition, the expert stressed that the epidemic situation in Ukraine continues to worsen, but remains under control so far.
“Beds with oxygen and resuscitation beds are loaded by 10% and 15%, respectively. The case detection rate is at 2.8%. At the same time, hospitalizations are already a quarter higher than discharges. That is, the gap between hospitalizations and discharges is increasing and the burden on the healthcare system is accelerating. Over the week, the number of patients increased by 16%, last week the growth was 9%,” he said.
Hanychenko stressed that the incidence is growing in 16 out of 25 regions. There were four such regions last week.
