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.
Johnson & Johnson Ukraine predicts a 7-9% growth in the pharmaceutical market in 2021, Johnson & Johnson Country Manager Denis Golubchykov has said.
“Regarding the development of the market, my forecast is average. I do not expect a fall or gains of 1-2%, but I do not expect double-digit gains either. Somewhere in the 7-9% range is what we expect,” he said during EBA Global Outlook held in Kyiv on Tuesday.
Golubchykov also said that due to the pandemic, the pharmaceutical market faced a crisis for the first time in recent years.
“We work in the pharmaceutical market and the FMCG market. They behaved completely differently. The pharmaceutical market at first gave a panic leap upwards. It is not clear why people decided to buy half a pharmacy. Naturally, this played negatively and even more in April. The market fell very dramatically and it is slowly creeping out of there. All previous crises did not affect the pharmaceutical industry, this is the first time,” he said.
“The FMCG market behaved differently. All this [the fall] happened later, by the beginning of summer, and not so dramatically downward, and respectively, it will not take so long to get out of the situation. From part of the market, a new category has formed – people have got used to using more detergents, disinfection in several months. This category is growing within the market. Beauty has dropped dramatically,” Golubchykov said.
