What Ukraine's COVID-19 picture looked like on 8 March 2021
A look back at the early March 2021 developments in Ukraine's pandemic response, from the first B.1.1.7 cases to the president's vaccination.
What was Ukraine's pandemic situation on 8 March 2021? The days leading up to that date brought two notable developments: the arrival of a new virus variant and a high-profile vaccination.
On 4 March 2021, Ukraine reported its first cases of the Lineage B.1.1.7 variant, which was first detected in the United Kingdom. The two people infected were from Ivano-Frankivsk.
Two days earlier, on 2 March 2021, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received his first dose of the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine. As reported at the time, the vaccine he was given was Covishield.
Taken together, the reports from those days showed a country that was both administering vaccines and beginning to detect a more recently identified variant of the virus on its territory.
