In 2021, Ministry of Health plans to purchase 7.9 million doses of covid vaccine

The Ministry of Health plans to purchase 7.89 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for UAH 4 billion by the end of the year to vaccinate 3.95 million people.

StateWatch reports, having analyzed the budget program of the Ministry of Health "Vaccination of the population from acute respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2" for the current year.

Other budget programs of the Ministry of Health don't provide for the purchase of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The average cost included in the budget program for the purchase of the COVID-19 vaccine for one person is 504 hryvnias. However, neither the manufacturer nor the name of the vaccine, expected by the Ministry of Health, is specified.

"Currently, it's impossible to understand how much money was paid from the budget for the vaccine and to whom, because the Ministry of Health doesn't disclose such information," StateWatch Chairperson Hlib Kanievskyi said.

As of the end of March, only 500,000 doses of the Indian vaccine Covishield were delivered to Ukraine, the price of which is not disclosed by the Ministry of Health.

To recap, at the end of December, the Ministry of Health paid about a billion hryvnias to the private company Lekhim for the supply of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine, which hasn't been delivered to Ukraine yet. The vaccine from China must be delivered by the end of May, otherwise, Lekhim will return a billion.

On March 10, the Chinese Sinovac vaccine was officially registered in Ukraine.

Today it became known that the Lekhim group of companies plans to deliver the first batch of Sinovac Biotech vaccines on March 25.