Ukraine has registered a record-breaking 11,787 new COVID-19 cases as of 9 a.m. on Nov. 13, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to 512,652.
In the past 24 hours, 172 people have died of the disease and 1,587 were hospitalized, while 6,155 have recovered.
A total of 233,849 patients have recovered and 9,317 have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the pandemic.
There are currently 269,486 active cases of COVID-19 across Ukraine.
In the past 24 hours, the largest numbers of new cases have been recorded in the city of Kyiv (1,083), Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (740), Zaporizhzhia Oblast (727), Sumy Oblast (680) and Kyiv Oblast (672).
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian laboratories have carried out 46,813 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 26,585 antibody tests.
Ukraine is currently the 13th country in the world by the number of new daily cases. Ukraine is only the 47th country in the world by population.
On Nov. 11, the government has imposed a “weekend lockdown,” forcing non-essential businesses to close on Saturdays and Sundays. The measure starts on Saturday, Nov. 14 and will last until at least Nov. 30, covering three weekends.
“The result we expect is stopping the growing number of patients at such hurricane rates,” Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said at his Nov. 12 briefing. “It is very important for us to prevent the collapse of the medical system.”
The government also imposed a nationwide quarantine, dropping its idea of “adaptive quarantine” that assigned different “quarantine zones” for different communities. The new nationwide quarantine measures correspond with those that were used for communities with the orange level of COVID-19 threat.
On Nov. 9, Stepanov specified the Ministry’s three criteria that determine when a person can stop their self-quarantine after contracting COVID-19. One of the criteria is a negative PCR-test, while the others are equivalent, he said.
This means that a person can stop their self-quarantine if they meet at least one of three criteria. The three criteria are:
- No clinical symptoms of acute respiratory disease and a negative PCR-test.
- No clinical symptoms of acute respiratory disease for three days, counting from the 10th day from the date of the first symptoms without laboratory examination.
- No clinical symptoms of acute respiratory disease for three days counting from the 10th day after a PCR test that eventually yielded a positive result, and without another PCR test to confirm that one has recovered.
On Nov. 6, Stepanov said that there are 52,000 hospital beds in Ukraine for treating COVID-19 patients. As of Oct. 25, 23,266 of them were occupied by patients diagnosed with or suspected of having COVID-19. As of Nov. 12, that number had increased to 28,514.
As of Nov. 3, about 18,500 hospital beds were supplied with oxygen, and, within the month, the Health Ministry plans to increase this to at least 40,000.
On Nov. 2, the Health Ministry launched an additional national coronavirus contact center that works around the clock, because regional hotlines are stretched to their limits. Employees of the contact center advise people on questions about COVID-19 and organizational issues related to how to treat the disease.
The phone number is +380800602019.