It is déjà vu: Another strict lockdown, similar to what the country endured one year ago.
The previous lockdown started in mid-March and lasted for two months before authorities started easing the restrictions. A year ago, Ukraine used to record around 400 new cases and 10 deaths per day.
This time, the third wave of coronavirus has hit the country harder than ever before. Recently, daily new cases have shot up past 15,000 with the daily death toll topping 400 people for the first time on March 31.
Only one region, Kherson Oblast, remains a so-called yellow zone, meaning the epidemiological situation there is moderate and under control. The rest of the country is painted orange and red. Restrictions vary from region to region. There are no green zones.
Kyiv is one of the cities struggling mightily to curb the outbreak. The capital’s hospitals were 110% full as of March 31.
“We have lines of ambulances in front of hospitals. We have no choice. Otherwise, there will be hundreds of deaths every day,” Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on March 31 announcing the new tightened restrictions in the city.
Starting April 5, Kyiv will introduce new lockdown measures, closing schools and kindergartens and shutting down public transport for everyone except employees of critical infrastructural enterprises.
The new measures will be effective until April 16, at least. These are additional steps to encourage people to stay at home on top of the restrictions that have been in force since March 20.
These earlier restrictions limited restaurants to deliveries and takeaway orders, closed shopping malls and banned events and mass gatherings.
Rumors that officials are considering a 10 p.m. curfew in Kyiv are spreading across Ukrainian media outlets. According to Segodnya news website, parliament will consider a curfew during its session on April 6. If approved, it would be an unprecedented move.
This is Kyiv’s third lockdown since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. The first two were nationwide lockdowns: Two months in March-May 2020 and three weeks in January 2021.
This time, red zone restrictions are effective in the city of Kyiv and as many as ten other oblasts including Kyiv, Lviv, Uzhgorod, Ivano- Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Odesa.
Ukraine has the 16th worst coronavirus situation in the world, according to Worldometers. It is also not alone in imposing a new lockdown. France, which sits in fourth place on the list, announced a month-long lockdown starting from March 20 in Paris and a few more regions in the south.
With the number of new coronavirus cases rising fast, Ukraine’s efforts to vaccinate the nation remain slow. As of April 1, only 248,734
Ukrainians have received their first vaccine shots, 0.59% of Ukraine’s population of 42 million people.
The country started the vaccination campaign on Feb. 24. At the current pace, it will take Ukraine 10 years to vaccinate 75% of the population, according to Bloomberg.
Yet Ukraine does not have nearly enough vaccine to cover even its top priority groups — 3.4 million people — including medical workers treating COVID-19 patients, front line troops, people over 80, and social workers.
Ukraine only has 715,000 doses, including 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 215,000 doses of CoronaVac.
According to Ukraine’s Health Minister Maksym Stepanov, Ukraine has signed contracts to buy 22 million vaccine doses as of March 30, enough to fully vaccinate 11 million people.
The Ministry’s plan to vaccinate half of the population, 21 million people, by the end of the year, sounds unrealistic.
While rich countries like Israel, Chile, U.S. and U.K. are well on their way towards fulfilling their immunization plans, Ukraine is lagging behind and may only catch up in a decade.
