We will learn many lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of them is this: Ukraine’s authorities are horrible at communication and have no consistency in what they say and do. We witnessed it throughout the nationwide quarantine that started in March, with various top officials giving the public conflicting updates about the restrictions and the spread of the virus in Ukraine.
Now Ukraine has lifted almost all of the quarantine restrictions — only a day before a single-day record high of 588 new infections was reported on June 4. Alarming, to say the least. Time after time, the government makes estimations and lays out roadmaps and benchmarks — only to send it all to hell days, or even hours, later.
On June 4, on the eve of the day when the indoor restaurants were supposed to open for the first time since mid-March, some owners in Kyiv still didn’t know whether they would be allowed to do so.
Their confusion is easy to understand. The Cabinet of Ministers said that restaurants can open on June 5. The same government also set infection rate benchmarks before a region or a city could quality to open restaurants.
These are benchmarks that the government said Kyiv and seven oblasts had not met. Kyiv’s infection rate stayed high, with over 2,000 active cases as of the morning of June 4. The other two benchmarks are availability of hospital beds and number of tests administered.
Some took to it mean that restaurants in Kyiv have to stay closed. Others remembered that Kyiv was allowed lift restrictions despite the COVID-19 statistics, as in the case with the metro and shopping malls opening in late May. We tried to find out whether restaurants will indeed be allowed to open. The Kyiv City Hall press service had no idea. The city service responsible for checking restaurants’ conditions refused to comment. Restaurant owners told us they were going to open.
This is extremely frustrating and unfair for restaurant staff, owners and customers. They were among the industries most hurt by the pandemic, having had to shut down for more than two months. Surely, they deserve a bit more careful consideration.
Probably the messiest moment came on May 23. Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said that Kyiv wasn’t ready to lift any restrictions due to the high rate of infections. It took him only two hours to change his mind. This signals, unfortunately, that the decisions concerning Ukraine’s response to the novel coronavirus are political, rather than driven strictly by science and medical advice. And these decisions are coming when it’s not at all clear where the infection rate is heading and as the number of fatalities continues its slow climb to 1,000 deaths. Stepanov says everything is under control. Heaven help us if he’s wrong.
