The Ministry of Health of Ukraine wants to impose a three-week lockdown at the beginning of January when it expects the country’s hospitals to be under particularly significant stress.
“At the end of January and the beginning of February, we expect a peak in influenza cases…” Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said during a morning briefing on Dec. 4. “This will lead to a serious burden on the medical system.”
“For this reason, we need to approach this period with a minimum number of COVID-19 cases, and, as a result, a minimum number of hospitalized patients,” he added.
For this reason, the ministry does not recommend imposing a lockdown in December. While COVID-19 cases continue to increase, this growth is stable, without sharp jumps.
“We can state that our medical system will completely withstand the current burden caused by COVID-19,” Stepanov said.
In a subsequent statement on his Telegram messenger channel, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal echoed the health minister’s comments.
“It is not necessary to intensify quarantine restrictions in December,” he wrote. “Today, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov assured the public that the medical system will clearly withstand the pressure caused by the pandemic until the end of December.”
The two officials’ comments came after over a week of speculation about whether the government would impose a second lockdown and when.
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.
Previously, the Segodnya news site had reported that the government would impose a three-week lockdown from Dec. 23 to Jan. 15. Also, David Arakhamia, leader of the Servant of the People’s faction in parliament, said the country would impose an “intellectual” lockdown. After Ukrainian internet users mocked that terminology, Arakhamia clarified that it meant different regions of the country would exit the lockdown at different times, depending on the local epidemiological situation.
Over the past two months, COVID-19 cases have increased rapidly in Ukraine. On Nov. 28, the country reported a record of 16,294 new cases in the past 24 hours. As of the morning of Dec. 4, 13,195 people have died of COVID-19 across Ukraine.
On Dec. 2, the Ukrainian government lifted its so-called “weekend lockdown,” which had forced non-essential businesses to close on Saturdays and Sundays for three weekends.
Although it was intended to help Ukraine avoid a full lockdown, the weekend restrictions faced pushback from business owners and regional leaders, who saw it as ineffective and detrimental to the economy. Some city mayors even refused to obey it.
Even the health ministry has been unclear on its benefit.
On Nov. 30, Stepanov said that the weekend lockdown had not brought about the expected result because the Ukrainian public ignored the quarantine rules. Later, however, he changed his tune and said it appeared to have decreased the number of newly registered COVID-19 case.
In his Dec. 4 briefing, Stepanov credited it with slowing the “hurricane-like” spread of COVID-19 in the country.
In mid-March, Ukraine imposed its first lockdown, closing down non-essential businesses, schools and most public transport for roughly two months.
