The decline in the incidence of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Ukraine is slowing down, but there is currently no high risk of an increase, experts from Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) have said.
“The situation with the incidence in Ukraine continues to decline in terms of the number of detected cases. At the same time, the decline rate is slowing down,” Head of KSE Center for Health Economics Yuriy Hanychenko said during an online presentation of an analysis of the situation with the spread of COVID-19.
At the same time, he said that an outbreak of the disease in the country is possible in July-August – everything will depend on how the situation with the spread of the British, South African and Indian strains of the virus will develop in Ukraine.
“However, in the next week or two, we do not expect a significant increase in the incidence,” Hanychenko said.
According to him, the average daily number of deaths in Ukraine continues to decline and amounts to 31 deaths per day.
“The number of hospitalizations has stopped declining and reached a plateau. This may be the result of a long weekend. At the same time, discharges continue to exceed hospitalizations by more than 1.5 times. The number of patients with COVID-19 is reduced by 20% per week. This week, there was an increase in the level of hospitalizations in Luhansk region by over 60%, but this growth was technical,” Hanychenko said.
At the same time, he noted that three regions need to increase the number of tests.
“In Kyiv, Luhansk and Khmelnytsky regions, the level of testing is falling. It is very dangerous due to the fact that the Delta strain was detected in Ukraine last week. In Kyiv and Luhansk regions, along with the reduction in testing, the detection rate is growing,” Hanychenko said.
KSE said that Ukraine needs to triple the pace of vaccination in order to reach the European level.
“The pace of vaccination in Ukraine is increasing – by a third over the past week. Thanks to this, the lag behind the average European pace of vaccination has decreased, but it still remains high [by three times]. Ukraine needs to triple the pace, there is a vaccine for this,” Hanychenko said.
He said that currently in Ukraine about 62,000 people are vaccinated on average per day. To vaccinate 70% of the population of Ukraine, it is necessary to vaccinate more than 225,000 people daily.
