Ukraine vaccinated 70,469 people on April 28, Chief Sanitary Doctor and Deputy Health Minister Viktor Lyashko announced. The figure is more than triple the previous daily record of 19,858 vaccinations, set on April 9.
This means that a total of 629,184 vaccinations have been given in Ukraine, with only 10 people having received two shots (of whom two received their first dose abroad).
Of the 70,469 shots given on April 28, 60,017 were AstraZeneca, 5,793 were Sinovac, and 4,658 were Pfizer-BioNTech.
Even though the vast majority of senior citizens in Ukraine remain unvaccinated, 34.8% of those receiving a shot on April 28 were under 60.
The sharp rise in vaccination numbers follows the arrival of 367,200 doses of the AstraZeneca-SKBio vaccine from South Korea on April 23. The vaccines were received under the COVAX initiative, the World Health Organization’s scheme designed to distribute vaccines to all counties across the globe.
Lyashko said on April 20 that he hoped to use the 367,200 doses “within two or three days” to demonstrate the state’s capacity for rapid vaccine rollout.
Ukraine also received 117,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine on April 16. These doses too were provided by the COVAX initiative.
Ukraine has also signed a separate agreement with Pfizer, ordering 10 million doses of the shot. The agreement was announced by the President’s Office on April 6, but so far none of this order has been received.
Since April 13, Ukrainians have also been receiving shots of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine, manufactured by Sinovac. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine announced that 215,000 doses had already been delivered, with another 1.7 million contracted doses expected to arrive soon.
Ukraine had originally ordered 12 million doses of the AstraZeneca and Novavax vaccines from the Serum Institute of India on Feb. 5. However, at present only 500,000 doses of this order have been received, and matters have been further complicated by the Indian government’s recent temporary export ban on the AstraZeneca shot in response to skyrocketing COVID-19 rates in the country.
The Polish government announced that it would send 1.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Ukraine “in the next two months.”
