Zelensky: Ukraine must receive COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it’s invented

President Volodymyr Zelensky has instructed the Ukrainian government to hold talks with foreign governments to ensure that Ukraine will receive a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it is invented.

Ukraine currently isn’t part of any vaccine projects, nor is it testing potential vaccines on humans. This means that the country will be heavily reliant on foreign help.

“Ukraine should gain access to the vaccine on an equal basis with other countries as soon as it is produced,” Zelensky said on June 16. “We have good relations with the European Union.”

Health Minister Maksym Stepanov emphasized this during his daily briefing on the morning of June 17.

“For us, it’s important, important that Ukraine is one of the first countries where such a vaccine will be used after it has passed all clinical trials before this,” he said.

On June 13, German newspaper Die Welt reported that the governments of Italy, France, the Netherlands and Germany had signed their first contracts for a vaccine with British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which is currently testing a potential COVID-19 vaccine.  

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza wrote on Facebook that the potential vaccine is “in an advanced stage,” with the distribution of the first doses to come before the end of the year.

“I signed a contract with AstraZeneca to supply up to 400 million doses of vaccine to be allocated to the entire European population,” Speranza wrote on June 13.

Astrazeneca has also signed additional contracts for a vaccine with the United Kingdom and the United States, the company reported.

Astrazeneca’s AZD1222 vaccine, developed in partnership with Oxford University, isn’t the only potential cure for the novel coronavirus undergoing trials, but it is believed to be the frontrunner. The company is one of five vaccine projects that received funding from the United States government before being approved.

According to the New York Times Vaccine Tracker, which follows the development of all potential COVID-19 vaccines, there are eighteen possible COVID-19 vaccines that are undergoing testing on humans.

Two of them are undergoing large-scale efficacy tests involving thousands of volunteers. Astrazeneca’s AZD1222 vaccine is one and the other is the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine against tuberculosis, which has the potential to prevent COVID-19 as well.

On June 17, Ukraine recorded a record-breaking 758 newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases and thirty-one deaths from the disease in the past 24 hours. A total of 33,234 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Ukraine and 943 people have died.