Acting director general of the Public Health Center, Ihor Kuzin, states that Ukraine may tentatively receive the first batch of coronavirus vaccine by February.
He announced this in an interview with the Liga.Life publication, Ukrainian News Agency reports.
"According to preliminary information, Ukraine may receive the first batch of vaccine in mid or late January 2021. COVAX says that the first batch of vaccines will make up 3-5% of the total amount that the country should receive," Kuzin said.
He noted that this will be a trial batch in order to work out the logistics issues for the delivery of the vaccine, the provision of the cold chain, the vaccination campaign and so on.
"Now vaccine manufacturers operate in three cold modes: -60...- 80 degrees, -20...- 40 and +2... +8. We have audited equipment for transportation for each cold mode. We have such data at the district level. Therefore, for example, if we have a vaccine to store at +2... +8, we can send the vaccine to the district level. If -20...- 40 - to the regional level,” Kuzin commented.
According to him, if the delivered vaccine needs to be stored at -60...- 80 degrees, then it can be stored only at the national level, where there is equipment, and then deliver it in small batches to the regions and immediately return for others.
The Boryspil and Kyiv airports are considered as the points of import of vaccines into Ukraine.
At the same time, COVAX can supply us several vaccines from different manufacturers at once, the preliminary distribution of drugs from different manufacturers is not yet known.
Kuzin also said that the groups that are planned to be vaccinated against coronavirus include 20 million people.
The highest priority groups are identified: health workers; military that take part in the JFO; social workers; persons in special institutions (boarding schools, nursing homes, etc.), and employees of these special institutions.
Next in priority are people in the medical risk group over the age of 60; education workers; employees of structures ensuring the security of the state, including the State Emergency Service, the National Police, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs; people from places of deprivation of liberty and pre-trial detention centers and personnel of places of detention and pre-trial detention centers.
Providing the number of vaccines at the level of 21-50% of the population, people in the medical risk group aged 18-59 years and other categories of the population and occupational groups who have a higher risk of COVID-19 will also be able to receive vaccinations.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov signed technical documents on the supply of 8 million doses of coronavirus vaccines via the COVAX mechanism to Ukraine.
Earlier, Stepanov said that Ukraine will be able to receive a vaccine against coronavirus the earliest at the end of the first quarter of 2021.
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