Skepticism plagues Eastern Europe
Public mistrust runs deep across region as infections surge
KYIV, Ukraine — Truck driver Andriy Melnik never took the coronavirus seriously. With a friend, he bought a fake vaccination certificate so his travel documents would appear in order when he hauled cargo to other parts of Europe.
His view changed after the friend caught COVID-19 and ended up in an intensive care unit on a ventilator.
“It’s not a tall tale. I see that this disease kills, and strong immunity wouldn’t be enough — only a vaccine can offer protection,” said Melnik, 42, as he waited in Kyiv to get his shot. “I’m really scared and I’m pleading with doctors to help me correct my mistake.”
Ukraine is suffering through a surge in infections, along with other parts of Eastern Europe and Russia. While vaccines are plentiful, there is a widespread reluctance to get them in many countries — though exceptions include the Baltic nations, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary.
The slow pace of vaccinations in Eastern Europe is rooted in several factors, including public distrust and past experience with other vaccines, said Catherine Smallwood, the World Health Organization’s Europe COVID-19 incident manager.
“We’re seeing low vaccine uptake in a whole swath of countries across that part of the region,” she said. “Historical issues around vaccines come into play. In some countries, the whole vaccine issue is politicized.”
An official in Hungary said last week that private companies can require that employees get vaccinated to work, a measure that
could boost in the nation’s stagnant vaccination rate. Government employees, including teachers, will also be required to vaccinate, the official said.
In Ukraine, only 16% of the adult population is fully vaccinated — the second-lowest share in Europe after Armenia’s rate of slightly over 7%.
Authorities in Ukraine are requiring teachers, government employees and other workers to get fully vaccinated by Nov. 8 or face a suspension in pay. In addition, proof of vaccination or a negative test is now needed to board planes, trains and long-distance buses.
This has created a booming black market in counterfeit documents. Fake vaccination certificates sell for the equivalent of $100$300. There’s even a phony version of the government’s digital app, with bogus certificates installed, said
Mykhailo Fedorov, minister for digital transformation.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chaired a meeting on how to combat the counterfeits. Police have opened 800 criminal cases into such fakes and deployed 100 mobile units to track down users, said Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky. They even caught a former lawmaker with one recently.
Ukraine’s low vaccination rate has led to the rapid spread of COVID-19, straining the country’s already overworked health care system.
At a 120-bed hospital in the western city of Chernivtsi, Dr. Olha Kobevko says she has 126 patients in grave condition.
“I’m weeping in despair when I see that 99% of patients in serious condition with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, and those people
could have protected themselves,” she said. “We are left struggling to save them without sufficient drugs and resources.”
The current surge seems especially lethal, Kobevko said, with 10-23 patients dying daily at her hospital, compared with fewer than six per day last spring. The number of COVID-19 patients in their 30s and 40s has grown considerably, she added.
She blames widespread vaccine skepticism, influenced by social media and religious beliefs.
“Fake stories have spread widely, making people believe in microchips and genetic mutations,” Kobevko said. “Some Orthodox priests have openly and aggressively urged people not to get vaccinated, and social networks have been filled with the most absurd rumors.”
Similar skepticism has
been seen elsewhere in Eastern Europe, fueled by online misinformation, religious beliefs, distrust of government officials, and reliance on nontraditional treatments.
In Romania, where about 35% of adults are fully immunized, tighter restrictions took effect last week requiring vaccination certificates for many daily activities, such as going to the gym, the movies or shopping malls. There’s a 10 p.m. curfew, shops close at 9 p.m., bars and nightclubs are closed for 30 day, and masks are mandatory in public.
So many are “afraid of the vaccines because of the immense (amount of ) fake information that has flooded social media and TV,” said Dr. Dragos Zaharia of Bucharest’s Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumology.
“Every day, we see people arriving with shortness of breath and most of them are feeling sorry for not being vaccinated,” he said.
Bulgaria, which has only a quarter of its adult population fully vaccinated, has had the highest COVID19 mortality rate in the 27-nation European Union for the past two weeks, and 94% of those deaths were of unvaccinated people.
Only 33% of Georgia’s population has been fully vaccinated, and authorities launched a lottery with cash prizes for those getting shots.
Still, Dr. Bidzina Kulumbegov bemoaned the slow pace of vaccinations.
The government’s information campaign “was not designed according to the peculiarities of our country. The emphasis should have been done, for instance, on the Georgian Orthodox Church, because we have many instances when priests are saying that vaccination is a sin,” Kulumbegov said.