Vaccination certificate to expire nine months after second shot, health ministry says
Ukraine’s COVID vaccination certificate will only be valid for nine months after the last dose of the primary vaccination cycle, Mariia Karchevych, the country’s deputy health minister, said on the 1+1 TV channel on Jan. 10.
She said the European Union made a similar decision on Dec. 21, which would come into force on Feb. 1.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Health is drafting a regulation to that effect, and it may be passed as early as this week.
“It will be adopted tentatively this week,” Karchevych said. “The validity of the COVID certificate will be reduced to 270 days.”
In late December, the EU announced that the EU Digital COVID Certificate would only be valid for nine months without a booster shot.
Ukraine on Jan. 6 announced that a booster (third) shot of the vaccine would be available to everyone who had completed the first vaccination cycle, regardless of the type of vaccine they were administered.
The booster dose should enhance the effectiveness of the vaccine, as well as ensuring better protection against the new SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, the health ministry says.
Two mRNA vaccines, namely Moderna or Comirnaty/Pfizer-BioNTech, will be used for booster doses.
They are recommended from six to nine months from the second shot.
After that, Ukrainians will be able to generate a new COVID certificate in the Diia mobile app, an official app created by the Ukrainian government.
The certificate will only be renewed after a booster, and not simply an additional dose. The main difference between a booster dose and an additional dose is that the latter is administered to protect people for whom, due to serious illnesses, two doses of the vaccine may not provide reliable protection, while a booster dose is administered to enhance the effectiveness of the vaccine, which decreases over time.
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