Ukraine loosens quarantine in some regions, Kyiv barely skirts by

Public ground transportation began running at full capacity in Kyiv on May 23, hours after Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said that the city isn’t ready to resume public transportation.

An hour later, Stepanov changed his mind, announcing that the city now meets the government’s criteria to loosen the COVID-19 quarantine upheld since mid-March. 

The initial quarantine measures in Ukraine began on March 17, and public transport, including subways, was shut down. In early April, the government imposed further restrictions.

On May 20, the Ukrainian government approved a decision to start easing COVID-19 quarantine restrictions beginning on May 22 under a new “adaptive quarantine” plan. The government will ease restrictions every 10 days for oblasts that meet certain criteria up until June 22, the new expiration date for the quarantine.

The three criteria are the number of new cases per 100,000 people, the occupancy of beds in hospitals treating patients with COVID-19 and the number of tests conducted over the past seven days.

To enter the second stage, over the past seven days an oblast should have less than 12 new cases per 100,000 people, the occupancy of hospital beds should be less than 50% and the number of tests should be more than 12 per 100,000 people, Stepanov said on May 22.

As of the morning of May 22, only 13 out of 25 Ukrainian regions met the government’s criteria — and Kyiv wasn’t one of them. It had 15 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people.

“Today in Kyiv this indicator exceeds 12. Therefore, moving into the second stage of the quarantine is not yet possible,” Stepanov said during a 9 a.m. press briefing on May 23.

But the local authorities had a different opinion. They said that the city’s statistics met the government requirements.

“The total number of new cases of COVID-19 in the last seven days per 100,000 members of the population is less than 12 people, specifically 11.7,” said Valentyn Mondryivsky, acting first deputy head of Kyiv, during a briefing on May 23.

It appeared that the health ministry and the Kyiv city government were now in conflict. However, just a few hours after his morning press conference, during which he said Kyiv was not ready to loosen the quarantine, Stepanov changed his mind. According to new data, Kyiv was ready, he said.

“Good news. Kyiv can move on to the second stage of quarantine,” Stepanov wrote on Facebook, repeating Mondryivsky’s statistics. 

As of May 23, Kyiv is the second largest hotbed of the disease, with 2,569 confirmed cases. The surrounding Kyiv Oblast, with 1,375 confirmed cases, is maintaining strict quarantine measures. In total, as of May 23, Ukraine has 20,580 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 605 people died because of the disease.

Previously, on May 20, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that ground public transportation and retail stores occupying less than 1,000 square meters would be allowed to resume operations on May 22. Shopping centers and the Kyiv metro are set to relaunch on May 25.

Other oblasts

Kyiv wasn’t the only region unhappy with the government’s initial calculations. Another was Luhansk Oblast, which had conducted too few tests to be allowed to ease quarantine. However, according to Governor Serhiy Haidai, this figure was calculated using the population of the entire oblast, including those parts that are currently occupied by Russia.

“Since 2014, Russia has controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts through its proxies. Yesterday, we brought up this issue, and (the ministry) admitted its mistake. Now there will be separate approaches for Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts,” Haidai said.

According to the health ministry, Volyn, Zakarpattya, Kyiv, Lviv and Rivne oblasts were not allowed to enter stage two for having more than 12 new cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people. Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblasts were not allowed to begin stage two for not having conducted more than 12 tests per 100,000 people daily. Chernivtsi Oblast, which has the largest number of COVID-19 cases of any region in Ukraine, was not allowed to loosen quarantine due to having more than 12 new cases per 100,000 people and having over 50% of its hospital beds for COVID-19 patients currently occupied.

Then, in the afternoon of May 23, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an announcement: Now, there were only six regions that were not ready to loosen quarantine. According to him, Chernivtsi, Rivne, Lviv, Zakarpattya, Volyn and Kyiv oblasts did not meet the three criteria to enter stage two.

Even later, however, Oleksandr Bondarenko, governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, issued a statement that the oblast was permitted to ease restrictions after direct negotiations with the health ministry.

“(We) recalculated and eliminated technical inaccuracies. As a result, the region was allowed to ease quarantine measures,” Bondarenko said.