Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on March 4 said Ukraine has entered the third wave of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The prime minister doesn’t rule out the possibility of a future nationwide lockdown.
“It’s obvious that the third wave of the pandemic has started. Strict restrictions in Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi oblasts have already been introduced,” Shmyhal said during his press conference.
“A few more regions are on the way (to new restrictions),” he added.
Earlier, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said that the ministry had no plans to impose a new country-wide lockdown in March or April because the January lockdown yielded good results.
But the situation in multiple parts of the country has worsened since then.
“If the situation worsens, if we see that medics are not coping, then we will probably have no choice but to impose strict quarantine like the one that we have already experienced,” Shmyhal said on March 4.
“I really wouldn’t want that,” he added.
Three Ukrainian oblasts, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi and Zakarpattia, had to shut down their entertainment businesses and restaurants for a week starting Feb. 22 because of spikes in their numbers of cases.
Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast also imposed the “red” quarantine level, shutting down all non-essential businesses and banning mass events on Feb. 22-28.
As of the morning of March 4, the largest numbers of new cases have been recorded in Zhytomyr Oblast (888), the city of Kyiv (868), Vinnytsya Oblast (827), Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (776) and Zakarpattia Oblast (676).
Ukraine has registered 10,057 new cases of COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. on March 4, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to nearly 1.4 million.
The new daily infections have doubled since March 1, when 4,285 new cases were recorded.
Furthermore, Ukraine has faced a growing number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19. In late February, a number of hospitals in western Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast were full. On Feb. 22, the first mobile hospital began operating in the region.
On March 2, 3,486 people were hospitalized, the largest number since the start of the pandemic.
