KYIV – Ukrainian medical facilities have thrown away some unused coronavirus disease 2019 vaccines (COVID-19) after doctors failed to show up for their own vaccination appointments.
Ukraine has just begun vaccinating its 41 million people against COVID-19 after receiving a first batch of 500,000 doses of Indian-made AstraZeneca shots last week.
The government prioritized giving shots to frontline medical workers but cited statistics showing that 47 percent 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 President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party said.
“This is very bad, but there is no other option… if a person does not come, it (vaccine bottle) can be kept open for two to three hours, after which it must be disposed of,” the head of parliament’s health committee Mykhailo Radutskyi said.(Reuters)
