KIEV: Ukraine will receive 117,000 doses of American-made Pfizer-BioNTech m-RNA vaccine in February within the framework of the COVAX programme, Viktor Lyashko, Ukraine's deputy health minister, said.

According to Lyashko, also Ukraine's chief sanitary doctor, Ukraine will also receive between 2.2 to 3.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine in the first half of 2021.

Manufactured in the United States, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be immediately distributed to vaccinate employees of hospitals that provide care to patients with COVID, he said.

"In parallel, during the first half of the year, starting from February, we will be able to receive between 2.2 and 3.7 million doses of AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine for the next phases of the campaign," Lyashko said on his Facebook page.

Ukraine has not yet registered a single vaccine so far but has banned Russia's Sputnik V for use this week.

Last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promised that Ukraine would buy 1 million vaccines in February, but did not name the manufacturer.