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As of mid-August 2021, over 30,000 IT specialists were vaccinated with the first dose and over 24,000 with the second dose. The Association has become a nationwide platform that brings together government and business efforts to collectively vaccinate IT professionals. Thanks to their well-established interaction, IT specialists from all over Ukraine were able to defend themselves against Covid-19.
The all-Ukrainian campaign for collective vaccination of IT specialists started in May 2021 after the Association initiated a meeting to discuss vaccination issues with the Ministry of Health. This meeting was attended by representatives of IT Ukraine Association, IT clusters and IT companies of Ukraine. Vaccine deliveries took place in July, and the Association began coordinating the distribution of the first 4,500 doses of Comirnaty from Pfizer-BioNTech and 3,500 doses of Moderna in Kyiv. Subsequent deliveries of Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca and CoronaVac vaccines were distributed in the regions.
The main goal of the vaccination campaign is the safety and security of all Ukrainians. For our part, we do our best to make the vaccine available and the vaccination conveniently organized. However, the conscious choice of Ukrainians to be vaccinated is as crucial. It is important that such a large number of IT workers have shown their activity, desire and interest in vaccination. Once again we thank the employees of the companies that joined the campaign. This is really a great contribution to the health of the nation because each of you cares not only about yourself but also about your loved ones! We would like to take this opportunity to remind that any team of 50 or more people who want to be vaccinated can register for vaccination through the contact center at 0 800 60 20 19, comments Maria Karchevich, Director General of Digital Transformation Development Directorate of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.It is important to join resources and work together to achieve national goals. The Association was faced with the task to vaccinate as many IT specialists as possible in the shortest possible time. Tetyana Nazarchuk, Deputy Director for Business Development of the Association, became the coordinator of this complex process.
Three reasons why we decided to initiate a campaign for collective vaccination of IT specialists in Ukraine:The first delivery consisted of 8,000 doses of vaccine for vaccination in Kyiv, and 612 doses for vaccination in Odesa. Thanks to the support of the clusters IT Dnipro Community, IT-Association Vinnytsia and Chernihiv.IT, we also covered the employees of the member companies of the Association in these cities and vaccinated IT specialists in the regions. The Lviv IT cluster was the first in the Ukrainian IT community to start vaccinating employees of the IT industry with the AstraZeneca vaccine, including member companies of the community. In total, the Lviv IT cluster has already vaccinated 7,141 people with the first dose, and 5,772 people with the second dose, using AstraZeneca, CoronaVac, Pfizer and Moderna. Representatives of the cluster are convinced that the launch of collective vaccination of the city’s IT community has a positive impact on the dynamics of vaccination in Lviv.says Tetyana Nazarchuk.
- Request from our members: as of April 2021, every second member company of the Association has asked us for help. Within the companies, the request came directly from IT specialists. We remind that as of August 19, 2021, the Association has 72 member companies, which unite over 50 thousand IT specialists.
- Established system of interaction with the Ministry of Health and partners: our experience in organizing the #AntiVirus campaign to help doctors in the fight against COVID-19 was successful, so we decided to coordinate the vaccination process.
- Proactiveness of IT specialists: IT specialists are a rather progressive group of the population, so we hoped that they would become ambassadors of vaccination in Ukraine,
As soon as we received a road map from the Ministry of Health, according to which the vaccination of organized groups was allowed, we began to act. One of the conditions was the creation of a specially equipped vaccination center, and since we are used to implementing all projects qualitatively and on a large scale, we created the first large vaccination center in Ukraine. We started vaccinating relatives of IT specialists on June 22, and by August 1, over 2,300 people had already taken advantage of this opportunity. I would like to emphasize that vaccination and revaccination are ongoing, although we do not see such an influx as was observed from May to July. All processes are organized and work in a coordinated manner, and with the level of awareness and the number of doses of vaccines available, we can meet the demand we have now, said Stepan Veselovskyi, Lviv IT Cluster CEO.Olha Shapoval, Kharkiv IT Cluster executive director, said that immediately after the meeting in May with Viktor Liashko, the then chief sanitary doctor, it was clear how important it was to open vaccination centers. In Kharkiv at that time, many vaccination points were organized on the basis of medical institutions, so the authorities did not consider opening centers at the stadium.
We understood that it was through vaccination centers that our IT professionals and their relatives could get the long-awaited vaccination. That’s why we took the initiative and on June 12 opened the first vaccination center on the basis of our partners of Vostok Bank and over the first weekend more than 800 people received the vaccine. In general, this process requires a significant amount of resources, both material and moral, but we understand the importance of this project, so we provide everything required with the support of IT companies and Kharkiv IT Cluster partners. In August, we began implementing group vaccination programs. To date, the first dose under our coordination has been received by more than 8,000 IT professionals and their families, more than half of whom have already been revaccinated. We continue to work both with the help in the implementation of group applications for our participants, and with the coordination of vaccination centers, because the number of applicants is still very high, Olha comments.IT Dnipro Community also actively participated in the all-Ukrainian vaccination campaign. The cluster team showed well-coordinated work. They promptly communicated with IT Ukraine Association, and thus it was possible to quickly coordinate the supply of vaccines to this region. As of today, IT Dnipro Community has organized vaccinations for over 4,000 IT professionals (about 3,500 with the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, and over 550 with CoronaVac).
In total, we helped vaccinate about 70 IT companies in the region. The community was among the leaders in the number of vaccinated specialists in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Vaccination took place simultaneously at several locations, so it was not easy to coordinate the process. We are grateful to the medical teams who demonstrated miraculous skills, vaccinating up to 110 people in an hour. On the busiest days, they vaccinated up to 800 specialists in a day, working in a coordinated and efficient manner. As a result, we received a lot of feedback on the high level of organization of the vaccination campaign, so we feel that the efforts were not in vain. It’s inspiring, said Yevhen Hostishchev, Executive Director of IT Dnipro Community.Over 2,000 Vinnytsia IT workers have also already received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. In three weeks, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was used to vaccinate 2,100 people from the city’s 19 IT companies.
It turned out to be a lot more difficult to organize revaccination. According to the rules, the second dose should be given 21-28 days after receiving the first dose, but it is impossible to leave 2,100 people without summer leave or protect them from an unexpected illness. We had to constantly make replacements and make sure that the total number of people was a multiple of 6 (it is the number of doses in boxes) at all points in the city. If the first vaccination was carried out in three stages, we had to invite doctors four times for the second dose. Although everything was not always easy, this painstaking work further established cooperation between companies, the Association and government agencies. This campaign has strengthened the friendly ties between us, says Dariia Nyshporska, Vinnytsia IT-Association PR manager and coordinator of the vaccination campaign.According to Olha Rys, the coordinator of Chernihiv IT Cluster, the most important thing was to organize a process convenient for all parties and to cover as many IT specialists as possible with vaccinations.
At Chernihiv.IT, we vaccinated over 500 IT employees and about the same number of people received the second dose. Organizing this process from the IT community was important for several reasons. First, we solved the problem of companies whose number did not reach the required 50 applicants. Secondly, in this way it was possible to optimize the work of teams that worked centrally in the Regional Development Agency, rather than separately on a company-by-company basis. We are grateful to the IT Ukraine Association for communicating with the Ministry of Health on issues that are difficult to resolve at the local level, said Olha Rys, Chernihiv IT Cluster coordinator.Olha added that the word of mouth worked with lightning speed and also brought IT outsourcers. In general, she notes that the IT community tested itself for stress resilience during the nationwide campaign and responded adequately to crisis situations.
One of the key tasks of IT Ukraine Association is to unite IT industry stakeholders to address pressing issues. The focus of all our projects is, first of all, people, because it is daily selfless work that allows the industry to grow by 20-25 % every year. It is not the first time that the Association unites the efforts of state and business representatives to solve the most acute social problems: earlier we launched an all-Ukrainian project AntiVirus, thanks to which the IT industry spent at least UAH 44.9 million to fight corona virus in 2020.
We have also started systematic cooperation with IT clusters: as of mid-August 2021, 9 Ukrainian clusters have already signed strategic partnership agreements with IT Ukraine Association. Global challenges need to be consolidated and adapted quickly, so IT Ukraine Association is ready to provide its resources to respond effectively to industry demands.
Main photo: www.internationaldisabilityalliance.org
