Hundreds of anti-vaxxers protested in central Kyiv today against the new quarantine restrictions favouring vaccinated people. Meanwhile, vaccination centres cannot keep up with the demand for the jab.
Today, hundreds of protesters blocked the traffic in the centre of Kyiv. They are against the mandatory vaccine regulations and the new quarantine regulation, that has been in put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19, according to Reuters.
“Such rallies of people that we see today, with calls not to get vaccinated, in my opinion, make a mockery of our doctors and families, who, unfortunately, have lost their relatives due to the coronavirus,” Ukrainian health minister Viktor Lyashko told a televised news conference.
“Trust me, this anti-vaccination spirit quickly disappears in intensive care units, and fake certificates don’t work,” he said, with reference to the spread of fake vaccination passports that Ukraine has been struggling with lately.
Meanwhile, outside the vaccination centres, people are lining up in huge numbers. Standing almost on top of each other, many Ukrainians have decided to get vaccinated – better now than later:
This is now.
A friend of mine is trying to get a Pfizer jab at a vaccination center in Kyiv.
Now they all want the shot🙃 pic.twitter.com/6uEE9u5lpt— Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko) November 3, 2021
No relief in sight
Still, the virus does not seem to have lost it’s grip. Ukraine registered 23,393 new cases of the virus in the past 24 hours. For weeks now, the numbers have been consistently above 20,000 cases a day except for weekends, where testing is reduced.
11,937 patients recovered in the same period, and 720 people died with coronavirus. This means that over 10,000 new cases are now active, which puts a strain on the healthcare system.
Lviv, Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk, where a lot of Scandinavian companies are placed, and Sumy, Zaporizhia, Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Rivne, Luhansk, Khmelnytsky and Chernihiv oblasts are all in the red zone with restrictions similar to Kyiv. Two regions are in the yellow zones with limited restrictions and the rest are in the orange zone.
