Ukraine has registered 3,915 new cases of COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. on Jan. 24, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to over 1.19 million.
In the past 24 hours, 5,407 COVID-19 patients have recovered and 83 have died.
A total of 947,514 people have recovered from COVID-19 and 21,861 have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the pandemic.
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian laboratories have carried out 17,600 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 5,481 antibody tests. Over 6 million PCR tests have been conducted since the start of the pandemic.
The largest numbers of new cases have been recorded in Lviv Oblast (320), Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (292), Kyiv Oblast (242), the city of Kyiv (240) and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (236).
On Jan. 25, Ukraine will reopen after the lockdown, which started on Jan. 8 closing all non-essential businesses. The country will go back to the adaptive quarantine measures that were in force before the January lockdown. Under the quarantine that is set to last at least until Feb. 28, all mass gatherings like concerts and parties are banned, restaurants can work till 11 p.m., while the mask-on and social distancing policies remain in force in all public spaces.
Starting Jan. 14, business owners are fined if their employees or customers don’t wear face masks. The fines can range between $122 and $183.
According to the law passed by the government on Jan. 13, when employees notice a customer without a mask, they have to stop servicing them and call the police if the person refuses to put on their mask. A mask has to cover both the nose and mouth.
Stepanov said there are hundreds of people who have had COVID-19 twice. Most of them are people who were sick at the start of the pandemic and have fewer antibodies by now, he explained.
Deputy Health Minister Viktor Lyashko commented on the introduction of vaccination passports, saying that vaccinated citizens will be registered in an electronic database and then later issued with a certificate of vaccination from a doctor once vaccination passports are introduced on an international level.
Read also: Everything to know about COVID vaccination in Ukraine
According to a survey by Rating sociological group, 52% of Ukrainians would not take the coronavirus vaccine, even if it was free.
