Ukraine has registered 19,676 new cases of COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. on April 8, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to over 1.8 million.
In the past 24 hours, 11,221 COVID-19 patients have recovered and 419 have died.
Over 1.3 million people have recovered from COVID-19 and 36,381 have died since the pandemic hit Ukraine.
There are currently 392,189 active cases in Ukraine.
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian laboratories have carried out 53,373 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 44,925 antibody tests. Over 8.45 million PCR tests have been conducted since the start of the pandemic.
The largest numbers of new cases have been recorded in the Kyiv (1,864), Dnipropetrovsk (1,665), Lviv (1,639), Kyiv (1,265) and Kharkiv (1,194) oblasts.
Vaccination
Vaccination in Ukraine began on Feb. 24 and by April 9, a total of 353,142 people have received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by India’s Serum Institute. Only five people received two doses of the vaccine so far; 18,569 people were vaccinated in Ukraine on April 8.
On March 1, the Health Ministry started accepting online and telephone applications from Ukrainians who want to be put on the waiting list for the vaccine.
Starting March 20, Kyiv is under lockdown in response to the rising number of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations. From April 5, the capital shuts down all schools and kindergartens. The public transport, including subway, allows only passengers with special permits. The permits are distributed by the city authorities to employees of critical infrastructure.
The lockdown in Kyiv will run at least through April 16.
Ukraine remains in adaptive quarantine, where each oblast is assigned one of four epidemiological levels, depending on the COVID-19 situation there. There are green, yellow, orange and red levels. A red status means that a lockdown will be imposed locally.
Eleven regions are in the red zone – Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Chernivtsi Oblast, Odesa Oblast, Zakarpattia Oblast, Sumy Oblast, Lviv Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Cherkasy Oblast and Khmelnytsky Oblast.
President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree that orders the development of a national plan for vaccination of most adults against COVID-19 by the end of 2021.
“In order to reach herd immunity we must vaccinate at least 60%,” Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said at his April 6 morning briefing. “But we want to reach 70%.”
Ukraine is expecting 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India, which has temporarily halted its exports because of the country’s own demand for vaccines. Stepanov stated that Ukraine’s diplomats are working on getting those vaccines exported to Ukraine.
On April 6, Zelensky said Ukraine reached a deal with Pfizer to receive 10 million doses.
