By Natalia Zinets and Pavel Polityuk
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian medical facilities have dumped some unused COVID-19 vaccines after doctors did not show up to have their own appointments vaccinated, ruling party lawmakers said Monday.
Ukraine has just vaccinated its 41 million people against COVID-19 after receiving a first batch of 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca shots last week, but is facing a battle against skepticism against the vaccine that precedes the pandemic.
The government preferred shots to medical workers in the front line, but cited statistics showing that 47% of Ukrainians do not want the vaccine.
“It is important for us to understand how all the processes are set up, why doctors refuse to be vaccinated,” Oleksandr Korniyenko, the head of the People’s Party, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said at a televised meeting.
“It’s very bad, but there is no other option … if someone does not come, it (vaccine bottle) can be kept open for 2-3 hours, after which it must be removed,” the head of parliament said. health committee Mykhailo Radutskyi said.
A total of 3,141 shots were fired on 28 February, including just 90 shots in the last 24 hours.
Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said the government was working to ensure that vaccines were not discarded, adding that this had also happened in other countries.
He was vaccinated on television on Monday and said Zelenskiy would take the chance soon.
“I have proved by my own example that the vaccine with which we are vaccinated is an absolutely safe vaccine, it is an effective vaccine,” he said.
A significant part of the population of Ukraine, like many post-Soviet republics, is traditionally wary of vaccines, for fear of side effects of poor quality medicines. Such mistrust has allowed a measles outbreak to grow into an epidemic in 2019.
COVID-19 cases emerged at the beginning of the year after silence during a strict lockdown, particularly in Kiev and western Ukraine, where the government set up mobile hospitals to deal with the cases sharply. Ukraine registered 1.3 million cases as of March 1, with 26,050 deaths due to COVID-19.
In the northern city of Chernihiv, only 87 out of 280 doctors agreed to be vaccinated, the city council secretary said in a Facebook post on February 24.
(Editing by Matthias Williams and Peter Graff)