Wide resistance to vaccines plagues Ukraine's COVID-19 fight

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — After receiving its first shipment of coronavirus vaccine, Ukraine found itself in a new struggle against the pandemic — persuading its widely reluctant people to get the shot.

Although infections are rising sharply, Ukrainians are becoming increasingly opposed to vaccination: an opinion poll released earlier this month by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 60% of the country's people don't want to get vaccinated, up from 40% a month earlier. The nationwide poll of 1,207 had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

The resistance appears to be rooted in longstanding suspicion of vaccines dating back to the Soviet era, amplified by politicians' allegations about low-quality vaccines, corruption scandals and misinformation spread through social media. Even more surprisingly, the reluctance still appears even among those highest at risk who administer lifesaving drugs to others every day: medical workers.

In the mining town of Selydove, 700 kilometers (420 miles) east of Kyiv, only 5% of the medical staff agreed to be vaccinated. Those declining included Olena Obyedko, a 26-year-old nurse who works in the hospital's intensive care ward for COVID-19 patients, where people die every week.

“I decided not to get vaccinated. I doubt the quality of the vaccine. I’m afraid there will be side effects," she said.

So few people chose to get the shots that the mobile brigade who came to Selydove to administer them ended up giving vaccinations to themselves in order not to let the vaccine go to waste.

“Such a low number of vaccinated people is associated with low confidence in the vaccine that has entered Ukraine,” brigade head Olena Marchenko said of the AstraZeneca vaccine that was manufactured in India. “This is due to prejudice and information that is spread on social...