KYIV, March 25 - Ukraine registered a record daily high of 16,669 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, health minister Maksym Stepanov said on Thursday, Reuters reported.

The previous high of 16,294 cases was on Nov. 28.

Stepanov said in Facebook post a record 363 coronavirus-related deaths were registered over Wednesday, exceeding the previous high of 342 cases on Tuesday.

The country of 41 million people has been hit by a sharp rise in coronavirus cases in recent weeks that Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has described as a third wave of the pandemic.

Ukraine has reported 1,596,575 coronavirus cases during the course of the pandemic and 31,135 deaths.

Stepanov said 18,561 Ukrainians got the first shot of COVID-19 vaccines and the total number of vaccinations reached 155,587 so far.

Ukraine received 500,000 doses of India-made AstraZeneca vaccine CoviShield in February. It also expects to receive the first batch of China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine later on Thursday.

But local state Medical Procurement Agency (MPA) said it cannot accept a batch because the local supplier did not provide the required documents.

Meanwnhile, Mykhailo Radutsky, the head of the Committee on Public Health, Medical Assistance and Medical Insurance in Parliament, said the delivery of a next batch of AstraZeneca vaccine may be postponed.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has received a letter from the Indian Embassy, which emphasizes the inadmissibility of defamatory statements about India as a manufacturer of medicines and the AstraZeneca [CoviShield] vaccine supplied to Ukraine," Radutsky said.

He said that, as noted by the Indian side, the AstraZeneca vaccine (CoviShield) is an absolutely safe and effective drug, which has been confirmed by the World Health Organization.

"Only in Europe and India, about 50 million doses of this vaccine have already been used. Significant volumes of the drug have been contracted by countries such as Canada, Great Britain, Brazil and others," the MP said.

He said that Ukraine has contracted 1.5 million doses of vaccine produced in India, but for the manufacturer "it is not a problem to transfer this batch to other customers", since the demand for vaccines in the world significantly exceeds the production capacity.

He said that some pro-Russian politicians and ‘pseudo-patriotic political leaders’ who are doing everything to return to power, amid the destabilization of the country, worked to disrupt cooperation with India. (rt/nr/ez)