Ukraine to receive up to eight million doses of coronavirus vaccine from EU - Stefanishyna

She wrote this in an article for the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (Mirror Weekly) newspaper.

Stefanishyna noted that the coronavirus pandemic not only significantly affected preparations for and the holding of the 22nd EU-Ukraine summit, but also became the first issue for discussion, as everyone is aware that ensuring rapid access to the vaccine is an important international task.

In this context, Stefanishyna recalled that on August 31, the European Union allocated 400 million euros to the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX) fund for the purchase of up to two billion doses of the vaccine by the end of 2021.

"Ukraine has been included in the list of participants in this initiative, so it will be able to receive up to eight million doses of the vaccine. At the same time, we are ready to contribute to the fight against coronavirus. We have the appropriate infrastructure, enterprises for the production of vaccines, and we are ready to participate in their mass production together with other EU countries," she said.

As the pandemic has shown, in addition to responding to large-scale challenges, attention should also be paid to systematic work to build a common system of sustainability, in particular in the field of health, both at the national and interstate levels, Stefanishyna said.

"We are grateful that the European Union has been and remains our reliable partner in implementing medical reform and capacity building of Ukrainian state institutions. For our part, we will continue to build cooperation between our and European institutions, especially with the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC)," she said.

Ukraine recorded 239,337 cases of COVID-19 as of October 7, including 4,753 new cases in the past 24 hours.

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