The second half of the vaccine donation is to be delivered in the course of the fall, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In Austria one cannot draw a line under the pandemic, “if not even the people in our immediate European neighborhood have been vaccinated,” Schallenberg was quoted as saying. “White spots on the vaccination map of the world are blind spots in the protective shield against Corona.”
Health Minister Wolfgang Mckstein (Grne) also emphasized that the corona pandemic can only be fought globally. Countries like Austria, which are in the fortunate position of having more vaccine than they currently need, should “do their part to ensure that sufficient vaccines are available all over the world,” said Mckstein.
According to data from the statistics page “Our World in Data”, the official number of new infections in Ukraine is currently increasing significantly more slowly than in Germany, but the vaccination rate in Ukraine is one of the lowest in Europe. Just under seven percent of the population are fully vaccinated, 11.7 percent received a first vaccination. In Austria it is around 57.0 and 60.7 percent, respectively.
In the past few weeks Austria has already delivered surplus doses of vaccine to Lebanon, Tunisia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Georgia. According to the Foreign Ministry, further aid deliveries are in preparation.
Germany: 1.5 million vaccine doses handed over to Ukraine
Before German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Ukraine this Sunday, the country received 1.5 million doses of the corona vaccine from AstraZeneca from Germany. The German ambassador Anka Feldhusen handed the vaccine worth around six million euros to the Ukrainian Minister of Health Viktor Lyaschko on Saturday, the representation in Kiev announced.
This Sunday, the Chancellor will meet President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. According to the message from the embassy, Merkel had promised Selenskyj immediate aid to fight the corona pandemic. The utterly impoverished country aspiring to join the EU urgently needs help from abroad. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Germany has given Ukraine ventilators, masks and medical equipment worth 76 million euros, it said.
According to official information, only a little more than three million people in the ex-Soviet republic have been fully vaccinated with two doses. This corresponds to around nine percent of the population who can vaccinate. The Ministry of Health had repeatedly appealed to people to be protected against the corona virus by a vaccine. According to representative surveys, around 50 percent of Ukrainians do not want to be vaccinated.
