Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov previously said that Ukraine will be able to receive eight million doses of the drug against COVID-19 within the framework of the global initiative COVAX during the first six months of 2021. At the same time, the first drugs will arrive in the country already in March. However, it is not specified what vaccines we are talking about. But what is the secret for Ukrainians, the whole world already knows - the Western media have told when and which countries will receive the long-awaited drugs against the coronavirus.
What will happen to Ukraine? ElitExpert dealt with this issue.
What vaccines are promised to Ukraine as part of the COVAX program?
Vaccines that will reach Ukraine thanks to the COVAX mechanism are free. The above-mentioned 8 million doses will allow vaccinating four million Ukrainians from risk groups. However, the Ministry of Health did not say what these drugs would be.
As the American edition writes Bloomberg, as part of COVAX, vaccines from the companies AstraZeneka, UBI Group and Sanofi will be supplied at the moment. As we can see, there are no ready-made vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna on the list, which the USA and Europe are betting on.
At the same time, not one of the vaccines that pass through the COVAX mechanism is not yet ready.
So, the drug from the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca is being developed together with Oxford University. The trials were suspended due to serious side effects in volunteers, and now the drug has been returned to the second stage of trials.
The vaccine, from the Chinese-American company UBI Group, named UB-612, has so far only been tested on animals. The first phase of clinical trials will continue until December 31, 2020 in Taiwan.
As for the vaccine from the French company Sanofi, their drug is in the second stage of testing and will not be available until the end of 2021.
That is, Ukraine is offered free vaccines that have not yet been finally created. Although Stepanov promises that the first of them will arrive in March, it is not a fact that at least one of them will be ready by then.
When to wait for mass vaccination and how many doses did Ukraine order?
Bloomberg also published data on contracts signed by countries to vaccinate their populations. Ukraine is among others. It turns out that our country agreed on the supply of vaccines for 5% of the population or 2,1 million people. This is 4 million doses, which is twice less than what is provided to us by COVAX.
For comparison, Canada provided itself with such a number of vaccines that the population could be vaccinated four times, the USA – for 154% of the population, Germany – for 172%. Among the countries that, like Ukraine, provided vaccines to only 5% of the population, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Tajikistan, Uganda - that is, third world countries.
At the same time, it is not known what vaccines our country has reserved.
Naturally, these are not the final figures, and the country will buy more, but in any case, Ukraine, taking into account COVAX, is currently preparing to vaccinate only 15% of the country's population.
The big question is when Ukraine will be able to carry out mass vaccination. The Economist edition gives the answer to this. According to experts' calculations, mass vaccination in Ukraine, when the drugs become freely available, will be able to begin no earlier than April 2022. In this respect, Ukraine is also at the level of African and some Asian countries.
That is, until all the neighboring countries are on the way to victory over the coronavirus, Ukraine will only begin mass vaccination. And how many Ukrainians will suffer by that time is an open question.
