Ukraine Health Ministry announces plans to vaccinate half of public

The
vaccine-controlled infections subunit of Ukraine’s Health Ministry approved on
Dec. 22 its action plan on immunizing the public from the COVID-19 disease, the
life.pravda.com.ua news site reported. It calls for vaccinating 50% of the
public, or 20 mln citizens, during the next two years. The plan, which will be
updated every two weeks, was developed by the Center for Public Health of
Ukraine, together with UNICEF and WHO experts. It consists of four stages, the
first being in January-April 2021 that will target those with the highest risk
of infection from COVID-19 and those who play a critical function in combatting
the disease. The vaccinations will occur at existing centers, temporary centers
and mobile brigades.

Bureaucratic
complications have limited to 53 families those able to receive state
compensation for medical workers who died from the COVID-19 disease, social policy minister Maryna Lazebna told a
television news program on Dec. 20. More than 300 medical workers in all have
died from COVID-19 in Ukraine, she estimated. A special commission conducts an
investigation to determine who gets payments, she said. “When the system has
not worked in this kind of regime, it’s very clumsy today, of course. That’s
behind this long bureaucratic story, with these commissions. It complicated the
process of aiding the families of deceased medics. They are heroes, but there
are complications.” The news of these families not gaining compensation was
reported by the bigus.info news site.

New cases of the
COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus reached 10,136 on Dec. 22, Health
Minister Maksym Stepanov reported this morning. That’s compared to 8,513 on
Dec. 21 and 6,545 on Dec. 20. Among the newly infected (on Dec. 22) are 537
children and 422 medical workers. An estimated 275 people died on Dec. 22,
compared to 232 on Dec. 21 and 80 on Dec. 20. The latest soldier died from
COVID-19 on Dec. 20, raising total casualties to 36. A total of 2,939 soldiers
were infected with COVID-19 as of Dec. 20.

Zenon Zawada: The
most notable event with the COVID-19 disease is the plunge in new infections in
the last two weeks. This has occurred even before the severe lockdown is to be
imposed on Jan. 8. So we can expect daily new infections to fall to the 5,000
range during the January lockdown and afterwards. Anything less will be a
disappointment. The reduced infections will work to improve economic and
investment conditions in the spring.