Ukraine’s Health Minister Maksym Stepanov informed on Thursday that his ministry was readying introduciton of ‘Covid-19 certificates’.

Covid-19 certificate is ‘a working title for a document set to prove a person’s vaccination status, a negative test result, or  recovery from Covid-19.’ According to the ministry statement,  the document will “enable free and secure movement of citizens during the pandemic’

The Health officials plan to bring the document in line with  EU Digital Green Certificate and WHO Smart Vaccination Certificate.

A certificate will have both digital and paper format containing information coming from  the health care digital system.  It will be issued by a hospital or retrieved from ‘Diya’ digital services platform.

Maksym Stepanov stated that the document would be finalized in a very short time to make it effective on July 1.

‘I think we need to launch it in the country within a very tight timframe,  preferably in June, for it to be in place starting July 1.  We know what kind of potential information will be in Covid certificates in the European countries despite the ongoing discussion about it. My vision is that we have to be able to add all the necessary data to make our own Ukrainian certificate that will later be intergrated with the EU certificates,” said the minister.

Maksym Stepanov highlighted ‘certain advantages’ the Covid certificate was coming with.

Health ministry officials expect that ‘it will make Ukrainians interested in getting  a Covid-19 test once they have early symptoms and will put them off self-medication’.

“As you know we have this self-medication problem. There is a great number of people and we don’t know if they had Covid-19 or not.  If it was mild cases when they stayed at home and failed to see a doctor and get a test. Once we have this certificate that grants some advantates after you are tested, it will provide another motivation against self-medication,’ added Stepanov.

For now, Ukrainians who are traveling abroad can still use International Certificate of Vaccination.