Minister of Health of Ukraine Maxim Stepanov
The Minister of Health of Ukraine Maxim Stepanov said that under no circumstances will Kiev register the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.
“Under no circumstances will the Russian Sputnik V vaccine be registered in Ukraine. You will not convince me to register it with any argument,” he stressed, speaking on Friday at the Verkhovna Rada. Commenting on the remark of the Rada deputy that other countries are using the Russian vaccine, Stepanov said: “Russia did not take territory from other countries.”
The minister also said that more than 127 thousand Ukrainians signed up for vaccination against COVID-19. According to the Ministry of Health on Friday morning, 12,481 people were vaccinated against coronavirus in Ukraine, including 2,913 over the past day. So far, Ukrainians are receiving the first of the two required doses of the vaccine. During the period of the vaccination campaign, which began in the country on February 24, the largest number of vaccinated were in the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions (1,110 each), the smallest in the Transcarpathian region (244 vaccinations).
Earlier, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky explained the refusal to use the Russian Sputnik V vaccine by the fact that it allegedly does not have confirmation of its effectiveness, and also by the fact that the citizens of his country are not “rabbits.”
Ukraine began vaccination against coronavirus one of the last in Europe – on February 24 – having received from India the first 500 thousand doses of the drug Covishield, produced under the license of the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca. In total, two vaccines are registered in Ukraine – Covishield and a drug from the American-German consortium of Pfizer and BioNTech. The authorities expect more than 100 thousand doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, about 2 million doses of the Chinese Sinovac, almost 4 million doses of AstraZeneca and 15 million doses of the American company NovaVax vaccine to be delivered to the country.
