Ukraine is loosening restrictive measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean quarantine is over. On the contrary: It will be extended beyond its current expiration day on May 22, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the 1+1 TV channel on May 11.
Shmyhal said that it is currently difficult to predict when the quarantine will end, since the daily numbers of newly detected coronavirus cases have been more or less the same for the past week. Ukraine is still at the peak of its COVID-19 epidemic, he added.
Additionally, the country still has not seen a single day when the number of people who recovered exceeded the number of new cases. “This stage is very important, critical. This is when we will understand that the peak has passed,” said Shmyhal.
On May 12, President Volodymyr Zelensky sent a conflicting message on the future of the quarantine.
During a meeting in his administration, Zelensky said that the current numbers “allow us to consider future steps to ease the quarantine and move forward with our plans.”
“However, we need to look at the situation: Depending on it, the indicators can change. We cannot allow major outbreaks of coronavirus,” he said, according to the presidential press service.
Transport trouble
On March 11, the Ukrainian government started the first of its five-stage plan to lift the quarantine. Some categories of business have started to reopen and Ukraine is taking its first steps toward a return to economic life.
But the government is in no hurry to relaunch public mass transportation.
Subways in three major Ukrainian cities remain closed. While cities were allowed to increase the amount of operating public transport starting on May 11, the government left this up to local authorities. In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced on May 6 that the city would only increase the number of trams and trolleys in districts that are insufficiently covered.
That decision had a visible effect. On May 12, the first working day after quarantine restrictions were eased, thousands of Kyivans started their day stuck in giant traffic jams.
“Well, it was expected that there would be a transport collapse in Kyiv on the first post-quarantine day,” Yevheniya Kravchuk, deputy head of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction, wrote on Facebook.
Noting that the price for taxi services had more than tripled, Kravchuk said she is now really “missing the subway.”
According to Shmyhal, public transportation will start to fully operate again closer to mid-summer. However, subways and intercity rail transportation will restart operations last.
“Until we pass the peak (of COVID-19), imagine two million people gathering in subway wagons every day. Metro and intercity transportation may become a major accelerator for the spread of the disease,” Shmyhal said.
