Doctors in Ukraine skipped vaccination appointments forcing officials to throw away vaccines

Medical facilities in Ukraine have reportedly thrown out some unused coronavirus vaccines after doctors didn't show up for their inoculation appointments. Ukraine is in the process of inoculating its 41 million citizens against COVID-19.

Last week, the country received AstraZeneca shots made in India. The first batch had 500,000 doses of the vaccine. But simply sourcing the vaccines isn't enough for Ukraine, which has remained sceptical of vaccines, and was this way even before the pandemic began. Ukraine's government has prioritised the inoculation of frontline workers. Even then, statistics show that 47 per cent of Ukrainians are wary of getting vaccinated.

"It is important for us to understand how all the processes are set up, why doctors refuse to be vaccinated," Oleksandr Korniyenko, head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's Servant of the People party, said during a televised meeting.

"This is very bad, but there is no other option... if a person does not come, it (vaccine bottle) can be kept open for 2-3 hours, after which it must be disposed of," said Mykhailo Radutskyi, the head of parliament's health committee.

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On February 28, the country administered 3,141 shots of the vaccine. In the last 24 hours, only 90 shots have been administered as per data released by the country's health ministry. Maksym Stepanov, the country's Health Minister said that the government is attempting to ensure no vaccines are thrown out. Stepanov added that vaccines have been thrown out in countries across the world.

Stepanov received the jab on television on Monday and said that Zelenskiy is set to receive the shot soon. "I proved by my own example that the vaccine we are vaccinated with is an absolutely safe vaccine, it is an effective vaccine," he said.

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A majority of Ukrainians are wary of vaccines, a common occurrence among post-Soviet nations. Many believe that poor quality drugs would cause side effects. It was owing to this scepticism that a measles outbreak became an epidemic in 2019.

Coronavirus cases have gone up recently, especially in Kyiv and western Ukraine, where mobile hospitals have been set up to counter the growing cases. So far, Ukraine has registered 1.3 million cases of COVID-19, with 26,050 deaths as of March 1. In the northern city of Chernihiv, only 87 out of 280 doctors agreed to be vaccinated.