“Russia pursues an active policy of aggression, even with the vaccines,” said Oleksandr Linchevsky, a former deputy health minister. “It is in Russia’s political interest that Ukraine receives the vaccines as late as possible from elsewhere,” because he wants to fill the gap with his own vaccine.
Ukraine, with a population of 42 million, will receive eight million doses of vaccinations under the Covax program, which provides low- and middle-income countries that would otherwise not be able to access vaccines. But the doses should only arrive in March. Negotiations on Western consignments continue later in the year, Mr. Stepanov said.
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Answers to your vaccine questions
Although the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, medical workers and residents of long-term care institutions are likely to be first. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help.
Life will only become normal when society as a whole gets enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries approve a vaccine, they will be able to vaccinate at most a few percent of their citizens in the first few months. The unvaccinated majority will still be vulnerable to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines offer strong protection against disease. But it is also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they are infected, because they experience only mild symptoms or not at all. Scientists do not yet know whether the vaccination also blocks the transmission of the coronavirus. For the time being, even vaccinated people will have to wear masks, crowds inside, and so on. Must avoid. Once enough people are vaccinated, it will be very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people who can become infected. Depending on how quickly we as a society reach the goal, life may begin by the fall of 2021 to approach something as normal.
Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that may be approved this month clearly protect people against Covid-19. However, the clinical trials that have yielded these results have not been designed to determine whether vaccines can still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. It remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while experiencing no cough or other symptoms. Researchers will study this question intensively as the vaccines begin. Meanwhile, even vaccinated people will have to think of themselves as possible distributors.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered like a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection will not be different from what you received before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported serious health problems. But some of them felt transient discomfort, including pains and flu-like symptoms that usually last a day. It is possible that people after the second shot may be planning to take a day off from work or school. Although these experiences are not pleasant, it is a good sign: it is the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and getting a powerful response that will provide long-lasting immunity.
No. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to replenish the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell so that the molecule can slide. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. Each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules at any one time that they produce to make their own proteins. Once those proteins are made, our cells cut the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules that make up our cells can only survive for a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is designed to resist the cells’ enzymes a little longer, allowing the cells to make extra viral proteins and trigger a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only take a few days at most before being destroyed.
Prior to President Trump’s executive order banning the export of vaccines from the United States, Ukraine was in talks with Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to speed up delivery. Although the negotiations continue, the delivery times are pushed back.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has barely expressed his indignation at his country, which is in line for vaccines, despite its precarious geopolitical position.
Russia has been supporting a separatist war in two eastern provinces of Ukraine for six years while trying to drive a wedge between Kiev and its Western allies. Vaccination politics play into the Kremlin’s hand.
“We are supposed to be like political acrobats to get a priority list” for vaccines, said Mr. Zelensky said in an interview last month. The US export ban, he said, “puts Ukraine at the end of the line.” In a statement to the Ukrainians at the end of the year, Zelensky bitterly wrote that “the richest” countries would unfortunately first have vaccines.
At the end of December, Ukraine accelerated talks with Sinovac Biotech, a Chinese supplier, and on New Year’s Eve announced an order for 1.9 million doses to be delivered in early February. This is hardly enough, but still a geopolitical victory for China, which offers some relief if Western countries looked the other way.