Much is being made of the recent surge in detected coronavirus cases in Ukraine. Words that portend disaster are being used. The growth is now exponential, and we all saw what that led to in other countries. We have been lucky so far, and now it is going to get us like everyone else.
But. Not quite. The situation remains critical. There is a virus out there that leads to a deadly disease. It can kill regardless of gender or political view or even age, though we know that senior citizens are more prone to succumb. But here’s another take, let’s look at some of the most relevant numbers to work out the reality of the situation as it stands in Ukraine today.
First, in absolute numbers, Ukraine has just recently passed the sad threshold of a death toll of 1,000 people. In one 24-hour period alone in the United Kingdom in April, 980 people lost their lives, by comparison. The reasons for the vast differences in the outcomes of the pandemic in these two countries is clearly how each has managed their responses to it, and that laid the foundation for why Ukraine and the UK are on quite different tracks now, not on the same track but with just a lag of several months.
The coronavirus is no different in Ukraine than it is anywhere else in the world. It is spread from person to person. The more contacts anyone has, in absolute numbers, the higher the risk of contracting the virus is. This is why we see people engaged in service jobs where they have many interactions per day wearing more personal protective equipment than regular citizens who are now only beginning to socially interact in small bubbles of trusted friends and associates.
While a lot is still unknown about the disease caused by the virus, what we do know about the mechanics of the transmission offer an explanation for the recent bump in the numbers of new infections and other key indicators. The reason for the increase is that we are now moving about more. We are coming into contact with other people more frequently. The natural result of that is going to be more infections. It is that easily explained.
Back in April the German government felt confident enough that they could begin, phase by phase, to relax restrictions as they felt that they had the spread of the disease more or less under control. In her calm and reassuring manner Chancellor Merkel offered the country an explanation of what was about to happen and – more importantly – what the risks involved were. Ukraine is now going through exactly what Angela Merkel explained two months ago. The exact words used by Merkel then included ‘critical” and “thin ice” and Ukraine skates on the same critical ice now too as it balances between safe reopening of the economy and the health and safety of the citizens of the country.
There has been much debate over the last few months of when was the optimal time to introduce lockdowns and then conversely how to safely lift the lockdowns. We saw the terrible effect on Italy when they failed to lockdown fast enough as the virus ran out of control. We continue to see that the UK has not taken the science seriously enough and the problem there has been exasperated by an incompetent cabinet. With case numbers rising across half of the US it is obvious that they have ended their lockdowns far too early. Ukraine is on a totally different trajectory, Ukraine is in the basket of countries that took this very seriously in the very early days and acted hard and fast, meaning that the actual penetration of the virus in the country has been very low. Other countries that can claim similar levels of successful crisis management include Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Slovakia.
In order to be able to quantify how successful any country or community has been at getting the spread of the virus under control another figure has emerged as telling an interesting story, and that is the number of positive results emerging from the number of tests as a whole. Three examples tell this story; New York, Arizona (where Donald Trump is unwisely convening his next campaign rally) and Ukraine. New York was ravaged by the effects of COVID-19 and the citizens of that state learned a very tough lesson. They now take this very seriously and as few as 1% of the tests they carry out now come back positive. Arizona, a Republican voting state since 1952 and as such potentially susceptible to coronavirus misinformation and skeptical of common-sense precautionary measures, sees as many as 20% of all tests carried out return positive results. On June 22. 2020, 19,404 tests were carried out in Ukraine and 833 were positive, equivalent to 4.3%.
Coronavirus is spreading in Ukraine now as a virus does, which is, virally. But due to the early actions and continued vigilance of Ukraine’s citizens, there is no reason to suspect that we are going to take off like the UK Spain or Italy, just months behind them. That fate has already been averted, provided we continue to exercise precaution and the government fulfills its end of the bargain in terms of maintaining high monitoring and insisting that safety measures are followed. One of the safety measures still being observed in Ukraine, with the demonstrably low level of prevalence of the virus in this society, is a ban on indoor mass gatherings in excess of 10 people still exists. The Dream City Church venue where Trump has his next rally can (will it?) hold in excess of 20,000.
Another statistical comparison worth looking at for Ukraine is the number of suspected cases of COVID-19 that have been reported since the outbreak, 81,125, vs the total number of tests carried out, 580,814. That means that for each suspected case that has been reported the number of tests performed is higher by a factor of over 7, pointing to a suitably cautious approach by Ukraine’s healthcare authorities.
Nobody (with the exception of New Zealand, where the only new cases recorded there in weeks have come from a couple who entered the country from the UK and whose 630 potential contacts were all traced and told to self-isolate within 24 hours) can declare victory in the battle against the virus and the awful disease it causes. But some countries have more reason to be cautiously optimistic than others, and Ukraine is among them. As such Ukraine should also be on the list of countries between which travel, with certain restrictions and limitations, can now be considered so that commerce can flow and families can once again be reunited.
Now is not the time to relax, social distancing and widespread use of disinfectant and monitoring of new cases and all of the other precautions we have got used to and are now our norm, like ubiquitous mask-wearing in confined spaces like grocery stores, and provided we keep up this way of life while we cannot say that Ukraine has weathered the storm there appears to be a few rays of sunshine coming out from behind the clouds.
