Ukraine has registered 15,131 new COVID-19 cases as of 9 a.m. on Dec. 4, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to 787,891.
In the past 24 hours, 235 people have died of COVID-19 and 1,776 were hospitalized, while 13,383 have recovered.
A total of 397,809 patients have recovered and 13,195 have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the pandemic. There are currently 376,887 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 (1,374), Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (1,258), and Odesa Oblast (1,211).
Ukraine’s daily COVID-19 cases, deaths and recoveries from Nov. 1 to Dec. 3, 2020. All data were released by the Ministry of Health. (Bermet Talant)
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian laboratories have carried out 48,028 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 26,852 antibody tests. Over 4.7 million PCR tests have been conducted since the start of the pandemic.
As the daily case numbers and the death rate have increased in the past months, the Ukrainian government is considering imposing a strict lockdown in December. Still, there has not been any official decision yet.
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 is an option should the health care system come close to collapse, Health Minister Maksym 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.
However, the government 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. 3, 2020.
