Ukraine has registered 5,583 new cases of COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. on Jan. 21, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to over 1.17 million.
In the past 24 hours, 13,981 COVID-19 patients have recovered and 241 have died.
A total of 914,730 people have recovered from COVID-19 and 21,499 have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the pandemic.
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian laboratories have carried out 24,504 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 17,093 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 the city of Kyiv (595), Zaporizhia Oblast (358), Lviv Oblast (337), Kharkiv Oblast (302) and Dnipro Oblast (295).
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.
During the briefing on Jan. 13, Ukrainian Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said that Ukraine will be under quarantine until Feb. 28. Meanwhile, a lockdown, when all non-essential businesses are closed, started on Jan. 8 and will last until Jan. 24. The government said on Jan. 15 that it will not prolong the lockdown after that date.
Here’s a full list of businesses that will be closed.
The Health Ministry will not cancel the lockdown earlier because that could increase the burden on the country’s hospitals, Stepanov said. According to him, the number of COVID-19 cases in Ukraine is expected to go up after the winter holidays because many Ukrainians traveled to other cities, visited New Year’s celebrations, and didn’t follow quarantine rules.
Deputy Health Minister Viktor Lyashko has 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.
According to a survey by Rating sociological group, 52% of Ukrainians would not take the coronavirus vaccine, even if it was free.