The Ministry of Health Care Spends 81% of Funds Within the Program of Procuring Vaccines Against COVID-19

As of the beginning of November, the Ministry of Health Care of Ukraine had used 81% of the funds allotted to vaccinate the population of Ukraine against COVID-19 in 2021 within the budget program “Vaccination of the population from the acute respiratory disease COVID-19 caused with coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.” Overall, 8.5 billion hryvnas had been spent out of 10.5 billion allotted to meet the respective needs.

This has been stated by the StateWatch expert organization with reference to the official answer of the State Treasury Service of Ukraine.

This amount includes UAH 9.1 billion from the state budget and UAH 1.4 billion from the specialized fund.

At the beginning of the year, the government approved the transferring of UAH 4 billion to the respective program, but later this sum was increased to UAH 10.5 billion. 

According to indicators of the passport of the budget program of vaccination of the population from COVID-10, 18.0 million people are to have been vaccinated with two doses of a vaccine by the end of this year. The total number of doses of the vaccines planned to be procured is around 37.9 million doses.

According to the plan of the Ministry of Health Care of Ukraine, with the number of the adult population of Ukraine being 34 million, 56% of all adults are to have been vaccinated with two doses by the end of this year. 

Apart from the vaccines, the funds included into the budget vaccination program are planned to be used to buy up 1.67 million doses of dissolvent to dissolve 10 million doses of the vaccines, 29.3 million injection syringes, as well as around 653 thousand of containers to utilize medical waste.

At the same time, according to the operative information of the Council of National Security and Defense, as of November of 2021, 27.8 million doses of the vaccines had been procured, with 19.8 million of them bought up for funds from the state budget (52% of the planned amount):

• 17.9 million bought for funds from the state budget (procured by Crown Agents)
• 1.9 million bought for funds from the state budget (procured by Medical Procurements of Ukraine state company)
• 8 million bought for funds provided by international partners (COVAX assistance).

The number of people vaccinated with two doses is around 8 million. The number of people who have received one dose is 11.4 million. 

The StateWatch expert organization stresses that the government has to reallocate funds in the state budget beforehand to ensure vaccination of the population at the level above 70%. According to the recent medical research, this is exactly the percentage of the adult population that needs to be vaccinated in order to overcome the pandemic by gaining the collective immunity against COVID-19.