133 students test positive for COVID-19 in Kyiv dormitory

Doctors have identified 133 coronavirus cases among students of the Ihor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute who live in a university dormitory in Kyiv’s capital. That makes the dormitory the site of one of the largest concentrated outbreaks in Ukraine.

In total, 152 people live there, according to a July 30 statement on Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko’s website.

According to Klitschko, because of the virus outbreak in this dormitory, the current coronavirus statistics in Kyiv are the worst in the city since the start of the pandemic — 199 new cases were registered in the capital on July 30. Kyiv and the surrounding Kyiv Oblast had a combined record of 242 cases on that day.

There have seldom been more than 150 cases registered in a single oblast of Ukraine in a day. The highest single-day number ever reported in a Ukrainian oblast was when Lviv Oblast stated that 240 people contracted the disease on June 23.

Serhii Chumak, acting director of the Kyiv City Laboratory Center of the Health Ministry, said that appropriate disinfection measures had been implemented to prevent the spread of the disease from the dormitory.

Ten students were hospitalized. The rest are self-isolating in the dorm, where they will receive treatment from medical workers, Chumak said in a statement on July 29.

Read more: 5 international students test positive for COVID-19 in Kyiv dormitory

Residents of Ukrainian dormitories usually have two to three roommates and use communal bathrooms and kitchens, which makes dormitories potential hotspots for the spread of COVID-19. 

At the same time, in any dormitory, there are isolation rooms, where people who need to self-isolate can be accommodated. In reality though, it’s up to the head of the dormitory to decide if a person will have to live in an isolation room, students from different universities told the Kyiv Post.

Quarantine rules also require university housing to be disinfected daily. However, multiple students said that cleaners don’t come every day and, when they do, they don’t disinfect the rooms properly.

The previous mass coronavirus outbreak in a Ukrainian dorm was recorded on April 21 in Vyshneve, a city 2 kilometers southwest of Kyiv. There, 78 out of 239 residents in a communal housing bloc tested positive for COVID-19 and two died.

Six residents of yet another dormitory in the Kyiv suburbs contracted the disease on April 27. Most of the 152 residents of that dorm were international students.