Religious leaders of Ukraine have been publicly vaccinated against coronavirus (COVID-19) disease with the AstraZeneca (Covishield) vaccine.

Mobile brigade No. 7 of Kyiv region vaccinated Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych, Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Archimandrite of St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery Lavrentiy Zhyvchyk (the Orthodox Church of Ukraine), representative of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the capital of Ukraine Leonid Barats, representative of the Jewish religious community of Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Ukraine Borys Strugatsky, and Head of the Department of Religious Affairs of the Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat Andriy Yurash.

Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav Shevchuk, during a press briefing after vaccination, noted the absence of any religious reasons for refusing to be vaccinated.

"Today we were vaccinated with the remainder of the vaccine. When you decide to be vaccinated or not, listen to the doctors, your family doctors. There is no religious reason to refuse vaccination. At the level of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, we have confirmed in a separate document that there is no religious reason to refuse vaccination. But vaccination must be voluntary, affordable and safe," he said.

In turn, Lavrentiy Zhyvchyk said that the church does not prohibit and accepts vaccination as one of the ways to defeat or limit the spread of this disease.