■ Ukraine’s president received a coronavirus vaccine in a bid to dispel skepticism.
President gets vaccine in bid to assuage fears
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president received a coronavirus vaccine shot Tuesday in a bid to dispel widespread public skepticism about inoculation.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy got the Astrazeneca vaccine as he visited the military near the area of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“Vaccine will let us live without restrictions again,” he wrote on Twitter.
Zelenskiy got the shot even though he had the coronavirus in November. His move comes as many medical experts, who have priority to get the vaccine, refuse to receive it.
Ukraine began the immunization effort last week after receiving the first 500,000 doses of Astrazeneca vaccine from India. It plans to give the shots to 14.4 million people, or about a third of its population.
Overall in the pandemic, Ukraine has recorded more than 1.3 million infections and 26,212 deaths.
It expects to receive more doses of vaccine through the U.n.-supported COVAX distribution program, including those produced by Pfizer-biontech and Novavax. The country also signed an agreement to purchase 1.9 million doses from China’s Sinovac Biotech.
Speaking in parliament, Oleksandr Kornienko, a leading member of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People faction, said that medical facilities had to destroy many doses of the vaccine after medical specialists scheduled to get the shots failed to appear.
“We need to destroy the much-anticipated vaccine now,” Kornienko said. “It’s important to understand why the medical experts refuse to get vaccinated.”
Health Minister Maxim Stepanov publicized receiving a shot Monday to try to dispel public doubts.
Opinion polls indicate that about 40 percent of Ukrainians don’t want the vaccine.
In the city of Kramatorsk near the front line in the east, many military servicemen who are also given priority to receive the vaccine refused to get the shots.
One soldier who accepted the shot, Oleh Kiryi, said many of his colleagues “have doubts about the quality of the vaccine.” He added that some others refuse inoculation because they already had the virus. In other developments:
■ Serbia’s health authorities say they are monitoring the condition of a man who mistakenly has received two doses of vaccines from two different producers. Epidemiologist Branislav Tiodorovic says the man’s condition is “under control” and that “something like this must not happen again.”
■ The variant of the coronavirus discovered in Britain is prevalent among Italy’s infected schoolchildren and is helping to fuel a “robust” uptick in the curve of COVID-19 contagion in the country, the health minister said Tuesday. Roberto Speranza told reporters that the variant, associated with higher transmission rates, has shown pervasiveness “among the youngest age group” of the population.
■ Health experts in China say their country is lagging in its coronavirus vaccination rollout because it has the disease largely under control, but plans to inoculate 40 percent of its population by June. Zhong Nanshan, the leader of a group of experts attached to the National Health Commission, said the country has delivered 52.52 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Feb. 28.