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People wait for their turn in a vaccination center in a city mall in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. Coronavirus infections and deaths in Ukraine have surged to all-time highs amid a laggard pace of vaccination, which is one of the lowest in Europe. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Coronavirus infections and deaths in Ukraine surged to all-time highs Thursday amid a laggard pace of vaccination, with overall inoculations among the lowest in Europe.
Ukrainian authorities reported 22,415 new confirmed infections and 546 deaths in the past 24 hours, the highest numbers since the start of the pandemic.
Authorities have blamed a spike in infections on a slow pace of vaccination in the nation of 41 million. Ukrainians can choose between Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, but only about 15% of the population is fully vaccinated, Europe’s lowest level after Armenia.
Overall, the country has registered over 2.7 million infections and 62,389 deaths.
Ukraine has faced a steady rise in contagion in the past few weeks, which forced the government to introduce restrictions on access to public places and the use of public transport. Starting Thursday, proof of vaccination or a negative test is required to board planes, trains and long-distance buses.
The restrictive measures have made a black market for counterfeit vaccination certificates blossom, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chaired a meeting earlier this week on ways to combat the practice. Police said they suspect workers at 15 hospitals across the country of involvement in issuing false vaccination certificates.
Despite the rising contagion, the government has been reluctant to introduce another lockdown. It’s keen to avoid further damage to an economy weakened by the conflict with neighboring Russia — which annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the country’s eastern industrial heartland.
“There are just two ways — vaccination or lockdown,” Zelenskyy said. “I’m against the lockdown for the sake of (the) economy.”
To encourage vaccination, the authorities have started offering shots in shopping malls. As infections soared, skeptical attitudes began to change and a record number of more than 251,000 people received vaccines over the past 24 hours.
“I’m frightened by a spike in infections, my friend is at a hospital in grave condition,” 38-year-old businessman Denys Onuchko said after receiving the first vaccine dose at a Kyiv shopping mall.
Onuchko noted that many Ukrainians have been disinformed by conspiracy theories about vaccines, but now take a more rational approach as the situation exacerbates. “People have been scared by stories ... but the real threat must make them sober up,” he said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said city hospitals are facing an influx of patients, an increasing share of them in grave condition.
Yulia Furman, 47, who also received the first vaccine shot, said many people in her entourage believed in conspiracy theories about vaccines.
“Many of my friends believed those stories about a global plot and now they are gravely ill, it’s now time to protect oneself,” she said.
___
Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Coronavirus infections and deaths in Ukraine surged to all-time highs Thursday amid a laggard pace of vaccination, with overall inoculations among the lowest in Europe.
Ukrainian authorities reported 22,415 new confirmed infections and 546 deaths in the past 24 hours, the highest numbers since the start of the pandemic.
Authorities have blamed a spike in infections on a slow pace of vaccination in the nation of 41 million. Ukrainians can choose between Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, but only about 15% of the population is fully vaccinated, Europe’s lowest level after Armenia.
Overall, the country has registered over 2.7 million infections and 62,389 deaths.
Ukraine has faced a steady rise in contagion in the past few weeks, which forced the government to introduce restrictions on access to public places and the use of public transport. Starting Thursday, proof of vaccination or a negative test is required to board planes, trains and long-distance buses.
The restrictive measures have made a black market for counterfeit vaccination certificates blossom, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chaired a meeting earlier this week on ways to combat the practice. Police said they suspect workers at 15 hospitals across the country of involvement in issuing false vaccination certificates.
Despite the rising contagion, the government has been reluctant to introduce another lockdown. It’s keen to avoid further damage to an economy weakened by the conflict with neighboring Russia — which annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the country’s eastern industrial heartland.
“There are just two ways — vaccination or lockdown,” Zelenskyy said. “I’m against the lockdown for the sake of (the) economy.”
To encourage vaccination, the authorities have started offering shots in shopping malls. As infections soared, skeptical attitudes began to change and a record number of more than 251,000 people received vaccines over the past 24 hours.
“I’m frightened by a spike in infections, my friend is at a hospital in grave condition,” 38-year-old businessman Denys Onuchko said after receiving the first vaccine dose at a Kyiv shopping mall.
Onuchko noted that many Ukrainians have been disinformed by conspiracy theories about vaccines, but now take a more rational approach as the situation exacerbates. “People have been scared by stories ... but the real threat must make them sober up,” he said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said city hospitals are facing an influx of patients, an increasing share of them in grave condition.
Yulia Furman, 47, who also received the first vaccine shot, said many people in her entourage believed in conspiracy theories about vaccines.
“Many of my friends believed those stories about a global plot and now they are gravely ill, it’s now time to protect oneself,” she said.
___
Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
Regret and defiance in Europe's vaccine-shy east as COVID-19 rages
Bulgarian hospitals struggle with COVID patients while many shun vaccines
Janis Laizans and Tsvetelia Tsolova
Thu, October 21, 2021,
RIGA/SOFIA (Reuters) - As Latvia goes into lockdown and hospitals in Bulgaria and Romania buckle under a COVID-19 surge while Poland sells surplus vaccine doses, many central and eastern Europeans are torn between defiance and regret over not getting inoculated.
The region has the European Union's lowest vaccination rates, an unwelcome distinction in which both political and economic factors play a role, and deadlier variants of the virus are spreading there fast.
Recovering from bronchial pneumonia caused by a coronavirus infection, Bulgarian Vesela Tafradzhiyska, 47, said she had held back from getting inoculated because media reports about vaccine safety and efficacy had been contradictory and confusing.
After eight days in hospital, reluctantly, she is changing her mind. "I am willing to get vaccinated, although I see that it is not a 100% guarantee, because people with vaccines are also getting infected."
In Bulgaria - the EU's poorest state and, according to Our World in Data, currently suffering the world's third highest COVID-19 death rate - just one adult in four is fully vaccinated. That compares with over 90% in Ireland, Portugal and Malta.
Hundreds have protested in Sofia and other cities against mandatory certificates that came into force on Thursday, limiting access to many indoor public spaces to those who have been vaccinated.
Meanwhile, coronavirus hospitalisations have risen 30% over the last month and hospitals in the capital have suspended non-essential surgeries.
In Latvia, which on Thursday become the first European state to go into lockdown rules since curbs were eased during summer, Biruta Adomane, a pensioner who has got vaccinated, expressed anger at the almost 50% of her adult compatriots who haven't.
"I'd like to go to shops and cafes, I'd like to enjoy my life more, instead of lockdown," she told Reuters. "People are strange ... I don't understand their motivation".
FEAR AND DISTRUST
Vaccine hesitancy is a global phenomenon.
France and the United States are struggling with it and it is on the rise in some Asian countries including Japan.
Experts say central Europeans may be particularly sceptical, however, after decades of Communist rule that eroded public trust in state institutions and left underdeveloped healthcare systems that now struggle with poor funding.
COVID-19 vaccination rates in the European Union
To view the graphic, click here: https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/EASTEUROPE/mypmngqmbvr/chart.png
A European Commission poll, the Eurobarometer, has shown that at least one person in three in most countries in the EU's east doesn't trust the healthcare system, compared to an EU average of 18%.
"Vaccines show that the shadow of the Soviet Union ... still dominates people's consciousness. Some still live in fear and distrust," said Tomasz Sobierajski, a Warsaw University sociologist.
Media freedom and civil liberties were curbed and industry was largely controlled by the state during Communist rule, a legacy now compounded by the mounting influence of populist politicians who "teach people to be distrustful," Sobierajski said.
'I WILL NOT'
In Slovakia, vaccine scepticism has been fed by opposition politicians, including former Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has said he would not get vaccinated.
In Poland, where daily cases have reached the highest since May, vaccine uptake is particularly low in the conservative heartland that tends to vote for the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party. That has left the government with a surplus of shots that it has donated or sold abroad.
In Romania, ranked second on the COVID-19 death rate list and where new daily cases have soared towards 19,000 this week, about about one adult in three has been vaccinated, the second-lowest EU rate. The country also has the bloc's highest rate of distrust in public health care at 40%.
"It is unimaginable, here we have roughly 60 patients, 90% of them are intensive care cases who need ventilation," said Amalia Hangiu the head of an emergency unit at a Bucharest hospital.
"Had we respected the rules and got vaccinated when we were supposed to, then we would not be participating in such a catastrophe."
Some, including Bulgarian pensioner Raina Yordanova remain unconvinced.
"I did not get a vaccine and I will not," she said. "Nobody knows what will happen years (after it has been administered) and I have not decided to die now.”
(Additional reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw, Jason Hovet in Prague and Luiza Ilie in Bucharest; editing by John Stonestreet)
Bulgarian hospitals struggle with COVID patients while many shun vaccines
Janis Laizans and Tsvetelia Tsolova
Thu, October 21, 2021,
RIGA/SOFIA (Reuters) - As Latvia goes into lockdown and hospitals in Bulgaria and Romania buckle under a COVID-19 surge while Poland sells surplus vaccine doses, many central and eastern Europeans are torn between defiance and regret over not getting inoculated.
The region has the European Union's lowest vaccination rates, an unwelcome distinction in which both political and economic factors play a role, and deadlier variants of the virus are spreading there fast.
Recovering from bronchial pneumonia caused by a coronavirus infection, Bulgarian Vesela Tafradzhiyska, 47, said she had held back from getting inoculated because media reports about vaccine safety and efficacy had been contradictory and confusing.
After eight days in hospital, reluctantly, she is changing her mind. "I am willing to get vaccinated, although I see that it is not a 100% guarantee, because people with vaccines are also getting infected."
In Bulgaria - the EU's poorest state and, according to Our World in Data, currently suffering the world's third highest COVID-19 death rate - just one adult in four is fully vaccinated. That compares with over 90% in Ireland, Portugal and Malta.
Hundreds have protested in Sofia and other cities against mandatory certificates that came into force on Thursday, limiting access to many indoor public spaces to those who have been vaccinated.
Meanwhile, coronavirus hospitalisations have risen 30% over the last month and hospitals in the capital have suspended non-essential surgeries.
In Latvia, which on Thursday become the first European state to go into lockdown rules since curbs were eased during summer, Biruta Adomane, a pensioner who has got vaccinated, expressed anger at the almost 50% of her adult compatriots who haven't.
"I'd like to go to shops and cafes, I'd like to enjoy my life more, instead of lockdown," she told Reuters. "People are strange ... I don't understand their motivation".
FEAR AND DISTRUST
Vaccine hesitancy is a global phenomenon.
France and the United States are struggling with it and it is on the rise in some Asian countries including Japan.
Experts say central Europeans may be particularly sceptical, however, after decades of Communist rule that eroded public trust in state institutions and left underdeveloped healthcare systems that now struggle with poor funding.
COVID-19 vaccination rates in the European Union
To view the graphic, click here: https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/EASTEUROPE/mypmngqmbvr/chart.png
A European Commission poll, the Eurobarometer, has shown that at least one person in three in most countries in the EU's east doesn't trust the healthcare system, compared to an EU average of 18%.
"Vaccines show that the shadow of the Soviet Union ... still dominates people's consciousness. Some still live in fear and distrust," said Tomasz Sobierajski, a Warsaw University sociologist.
Media freedom and civil liberties were curbed and industry was largely controlled by the state during Communist rule, a legacy now compounded by the mounting influence of populist politicians who "teach people to be distrustful," Sobierajski said.
'I WILL NOT'
In Slovakia, vaccine scepticism has been fed by opposition politicians, including former Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has said he would not get vaccinated.
In Poland, where daily cases have reached the highest since May, vaccine uptake is particularly low in the conservative heartland that tends to vote for the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party. That has left the government with a surplus of shots that it has donated or sold abroad.
In Romania, ranked second on the COVID-19 death rate list and where new daily cases have soared towards 19,000 this week, about about one adult in three has been vaccinated, the second-lowest EU rate. The country also has the bloc's highest rate of distrust in public health care at 40%.
"It is unimaginable, here we have roughly 60 patients, 90% of them are intensive care cases who need ventilation," said Amalia Hangiu the head of an emergency unit at a Bucharest hospital.
"Had we respected the rules and got vaccinated when we were supposed to, then we would not be participating in such a catastrophe."
Some, including Bulgarian pensioner Raina Yordanova remain unconvinced.
"I did not get a vaccine and I will not," she said. "Nobody knows what will happen years (after it has been administered) and I have not decided to die now.”
(Additional reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw, Jason Hovet in Prague and Luiza Ilie in Bucharest; editing by John Stonestreet)
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