Today marks the beginning of a lockdown in Kyiv very similar to the lockdown we knew when the pandemic started last spring.
In short, Kyiv has been sent back to day 1 of the pandemic but with worse numbers regarding registered daily cases of COVID19. From today, the capital city will no longer have operating public transportation for non-essential workers.
Similarly, the residents of Kyiv will no longer have access to kindergartens or schools. Restaurants and cafes will be closed again, but with availability for takeaway or delivery as it has been for a while.
Fairs, open air markets and non-essential businesses will remain closed, including cultural venues like museums and cinemas. Still a lot of these places have been operating on a speak-easy basis, but police and relevant authorities have been asked to step up the supervision of businesses and civilians alike.
Record shattering numbers
Today only saw 10,000 registered cases, but yesterday Ukraine shattered yet another record of daily cases registered. 20,000 people got a positive test result, the highest number since the beginning of the pandemic.
This also puts a question mark next to the credibility of the test numbers, since they seem to differ by 50 percent from day to day. A lot of these discrepancies are to be found in the number of tests.
Ukraine still has no consistent method of testing the broader population. In the past 24 hours, only 34,666 tests were conducted in Ukraine, while the normal daily number hovers around 80,000-100,000 tests.
It is at least the third time this year, that the number of daily registered cases have broken a former record.
No nationwide lockdown
Despite the numbers, the cabinet of ministers are still unlikely to impose a nationwide lockdown as we saw in March 2020, according to Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleh Nemchinov.
“The issue of introducing nationwide restrictions in Ukraine is not being discussed now. We encourage local communities to make their own decisions within their competence, especially in the territories and regions where the red level of epidemic danger has already been introduced,” Nemchinov said.
Kyiv City and the ten regions: Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zakarpattia, Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Chernivtsi are currently red zones. It means that they have to introduce strict measures to stop the spread of the virus, such as closing all not essential shops.
