COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine
The COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine has resulted in 5,533,069[1] confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 109,920[1] deaths.
See also: COVID-19 pandemic in Crimea, COVID-19 pandemic in Sevastopol, COVID-19 pandemic in the Donetsk People's Republic, and COVID-19 pandemic in the Luhansk People's RepublicCOVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine
The virus was confirmed to have spread to Ukraine when the country's first case was confirmed to be hospitalized in Chernivtsi Oblast on 3 March 2020,[3] a man who had travelled from Italy to Romania by plane and then arrived in Ukraine by car.[4]
An emergency was declared on 20 March 2020 in Kyiv Oblast, Chernivtsi Oblast, Zhytomyr Oblast, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, and the city of Kyiv.[5]
New infections and deaths started to break records by late October 2021.[6][7] By then, a total of 2.8 million coronavirus cases and 64,936 COVID-19 related deaths had occurred in Ukraine.[7]
Ukraine's ongoing vaccination program[8] started on 24 February 2021 and from that day to 12 September 2021, 10,710,944 vaccinations were given in Ukraine (meaning 18% of the adult population of Ukraine had been vaccinated against COVID-19).[9] About 44% of those vaccinated had been fully vaccinated.[10][11] In an August 2021 poll 56% of Ukrainians did not plan to be vaccinated.[11] Demand for vaccinations multiplied sharply by late October 2021.[6][7] On 7 January 2022 the Ministry of Health announced that 44.9% of the adult population had undergone a full course of vaccination.[12]
Statistics for the Russian-held Autonomous Republic of Crimea and city of Sevastopol, and for the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine, are not reported by Ukraine's state agencies, and are not included in the country's totals.[13]
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Ministry of Healthcare has made no further press releases related to COVID-19, and the latest counts were for 23 February 2022.[14] As a result, daily counts are displayed in various diagrams as zero. In late May 2022, Chief State Sanitary Doctor Ihor Kuzin stated that since the beginning of the invasion, more than 750 studies had been conducted and that COVID-19 outbreaks were not expected in Ukraine in the near future.[15] On 1 July 2023, the Ministry downgraded the disease's alert levels to that of regular respiratory diseases and lifted all emergency measures relating to it.[16]
Background
On 12 January, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan, Hubei, China, who had initially come to the attention of the WHO on 31 December 2019.[17][18]
Unlike SARS of 2003, the case fatality ratio for COVID-19[19][20] has been much lower, but the transmission has been significantly greater, with a significant total death toll.[21][19]
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has set four different levels of epidemic danger:[113]
These restrictions will not apply if all staff and all visitors, except those under 18, are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.[113]
On 9 June 2021 all Ukrainian regions were set in a 'green' quarantine zone.[114]
On 23 September 2021 all of Ukraine was set to the "yellow" zone.[115]
On 15 October Kherson Oblast was classified as a "red" zone and on 18 October Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Odesa Oblast, Donetsk Oblast and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast were also made a "red" zone.[116] On 23 October Sumy Oblast and on 26 October Rivne Oblast and Mykolaiv Oblast joined them.[116] On 30 October 2021 Zhytomyr Oblast, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Kyiv Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Lviv Oblast, Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Chernihiv Oblast also become "red" zones.[117] (The city of) Kyiv was placed in the "red" zone on 1 November 2021.[118]
On 28 November 2021 only Zakarpattia Oblast, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ternopil Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast and Chernivtsi Oblast were in the yellow zone, Poltava Oblast was in the orange zone, and the rest of the regions had been placed in the red zone.[119]
On 23 December 2021 only Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Volyn Oblast remained in the red zone and all other were a yellow zone.[120] 7 days later Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Volyn Oblast also became a yellow zone.[121]
On 29 January 2022, there were two regions (Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast and Rivne Oblast) a red zone, 16 regions (Vinnytsia Oblast, Volyn Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Zhytomyr Oblast, Zakarpattia Oblast, Zaporizhia Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Lviv Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Odesa Oblast, Sumy Oblast, Ternopil Oblast, Khmelnytsky Oblast, Cherkasy Oblast, Chernivtsi Oblast and Chernihiv Oblast) were an orange zone and only (the city of) Kyiv, as well as Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Kyiv Oblast, Kirovohrad Oblast, Poltava Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast and Kherson Oblast regions remained "yellow".[122]