It seems so long ago, on March 3, that the Kyiv Post chronicled the first coronavirus case in Ukraine. But it was less than nine months ago. Mercifully, it took Ukraine another 172 days or so to reach the 100,000 mark in caseloads.
But look what’s happened since then. We are now rising 100,000 cases every nine days, since Nov. 2, when Ukraine hit the 400,000 mark.
This is my unofficial chart based on our reporting and the time that lapsed until the next milestone:
1st case — March 3, 2020
100,000 — Aug. 22, 2020 (172 days)
200,000 — Sept. 28, 2020 (37 days)
300,000 — Oct. 19, 2020 (21 days)
400,000 — Nov. 2, 2020 (14 days)
500,000 — Nov. 11, 2020 (9 days)
600,000 — Nov. 20, 2020 (9 days)
If we don’t break this pace or flatten the curve, this is what we’re looking at if the situation doesn’t get worse, which it is expected to do during winter:
700,000 — Nov. 29, 2020 (9 days)
800,000 — Dec. 8, 2020 (9 days)
900,000 — Dec. 27, 2020 (9 days)
1,000,000 — Jan. 5, 2021 (9 days)
We were able to spend most of the first two months of 2020 without thinking much about the coronavirus. Then it consumed our lives and now, what was unimaginable in March, is now likely to become reality by New Year’s Eve.
On the death front, I remember the Kyiv Post getting criticized for quoting experts that up to 20,000 people could die of the coronavirus in Ukraine by year’s end. The number still seems high, but the death toll is accelerating.
It took more than three months for Ukraine to record the first 1,000 deaths, on June 22. Then it took another 110 days to hit the 5,000 mark. But since then, the coronavirus has been killing 1,000 people in Ukraine about every week.
This means we’ll hit 15,000 deaths by year’s end if nothing changes. It’s still much better than America’s more than 250,000 deaths, but the U.S. is not the country to emulate in fighting the coronavirus.
Again, my unofficial count of deaths:
1,000 — June 22, 2020 (109 days)
5,000 — Oct. 12, 2020 (110 days)
6,000 — Oct. 22, 2020 (10 days)
7,000 — Oct. 31, 2020 (9 days)
8,000 — Nov. 7, 2020 (8 days)
9,000 — Nov. 11, 2020 (4 days)
10,000 — Nov. 18, 2020 (7 days)
Let’s hope for a safe and effective vaccine quickly.
