The Ministry of Health (MoH) has forbidden the dissemination in the regions of any information about the manufacturers and suppliers of the coronavirus vaccine in the medical vertical.
This is stated in the corresponding order published on the department's website.
"To ensure the non-disclosure of confidential information (any information regarding manufacturers and/or suppliers, prices for vaccines against acute respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, etc.) that has become known in the course of this order implementation," — the order states.
The Chairman of the expert organization StateWatch, Hlib Kanievskyi, paid his attention to the document and wrote about it on his Facebook page.
"It seems that Mr. Stepanov [the Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov—ed. The Page] lives by the standards of the 19th century and does not realize that in 2021 Ukraine has had the Law on Access to Public Information for 10 years that clearly regulates: "access to information about recipients of budget funds cannot be limited," Kanevskyi noted.
He also added that as of March 2, 2.6 billion UAH was paid for the vaccine from the budget: 964.3 million UAH for the Chinese vaccine CoronaVac (504 UAH / dose) that has not yet been delivered; 1.6 billion UAH for the Indian Covishield (the agreement is not publicly available).
Context. In Kyiv, on February 25, the process of vaccination against coronavirus began with an analogue of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine—Covishield. In other regions of the country, vaccinations began a day earlier.