Ukraine has registered 13,825 new COVID-19 cases as of 9 a.m. on Dec. 5, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to 801,716.
In the past 24 hours, 226 people have died of COVID-19 and 1,504 were hospitalized, while 14,724 have recovered.
A total of 412,533 patients have recovered and 13,421 have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the pandemic. There are currently 375,762 active cases of COVID-19 across the country.
In the past 24 hours, the largest numbers of new cases have been recorded in the city of Kyiv (1,541), Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (1,058), and Odesa Oblast (1,015), Zaporizhzhia Oblast (1,001) and Kyiv Oblast (995).
Ukraine’s daily COVID-19 cases, deaths and recoveries from Nov. 1 to Dec. 4, 2020. All data were released by the Ministry of Health. (Bermet Talant)
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian laboratories have carried out 44,538 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 22,995 antibody tests. Over 4.7 million PCR tests have been conducted since the start of the pandemic.
During a briefing on Dec. 5, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said that weekend lockdown, which was imposed for three weekends from Nov. 14 until Nov. 30, had yielded a positive result. According to Stepanov, the numbers of new COVID-19 cases in Ukraine are currently lower than in the previous last week. A week ago, on Nov. 28, Ukraine registered 16,294 new COVID-19 cases.
In the past two months, the daily case numbers and the death rate have increased sharply. For this reason, the Ukrainian government is considering imposing a strict lockdown. So far, however, there has been no official decision.
The Ministry of Health wants to impose a three-week lockdown at the beginning of January when it expects the burden on the country’s hospitals to be increasing, Stepanov said during a morning briefing on Dec. 4.
According to Stepanov, Ukraine can expect a peak in influenza cases at the end of January and the beginning of February, which will put serious stress on the medical system. The goal of a January lockdown would be to prevent hospitals from becoming overloaded.
Previously, on Dec. 2, Halyna Yanchenko, a lawmaker with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, said a lockdown would come no sooner than Dec. 25. A day earlier, Oleksiy Denisov, secretary of the National Defense and Security Council, said that a lockdown was in the works, but the government still had to decide exactly when it would be imposed — either in December or on Jan. 2.
A full lockdown would be an option should the health care system come close to collapse, Stepanov said on Nov. 23. According to him, that may happen when the country hits 25,000-30,000 daily coronavirus cases.
During a briefing on Nov. 27, Stepanov said that there are currently 55,886 hospital beds designated for COVID-19 patients and 49.9% of them are currently occupied.
“The situation is under control, our medical system is coping with it,” he said.
The government, however, has struggled to stem the spread of the virus while avoiding causing harm to the economy and Ukrainian businesses.
“The introduction of any quarantine restrictions is intended solely to stop the (increasing) numbers of sick patients and, in this way, to relieve the pressure on our medical system,” Stepanov said during a briefing on Nov. 25.
Ukraine’s daily new COVID-19 cases and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, the most accurate way of diagnosing the novel coronavirus, between Nov. 1 and Dec. 4, 2020.
