Ukraine's April 2021 vaccine arrivals through COVAX
A look back at the shipments that reached Ukraine in mid-April 2021, alongside a diplomatic protest over the Kerch Strait.
What did Ukraine's vaccination effort look like on 21 April 2021? It was shaped by shipments that had arrived days earlier through the global COVAX initiative.
On 16 April 2021, the first batch of Comirnaty, the vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech, reached Ukraine under COVAX. The same day, Ukraine also received 117,000 doses of the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine through the same vaccine-sharing scheme. Together, the deliveries gave the country access to two different vaccines through the initiative.
The week had a foreign-policy dimension too. On 15 April 2021, Ukraine protested against an alleged Russian announcement that, beginning the following week, the Kerch Strait would be closed to foreign warships and state ships until October.
The two strands, health and security, ran side by side in the days before 21 April 2021: a vaccination programme supplied through an international mechanism, and a diplomatic dispute over a strategic waterway.
