Health Ministry To Recommend Cabinet Introduce Lockdown Early In January

The Health Ministry intends to recommend that the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine impose a lockdown early in January 2021.

Health Minister, Maksym Stepanov, has said this at a briefing, the Ukrainian News Agency reports.

The minister considers that the Ukrainian health care system can stand the current load.

He noted that medical workers are working round-the-clock now.

Stepanov also said that such quarantine will last for three weeks.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, a total of 42% of pollees questioned by the Rating sociological group advocate imposition of a lockdown, 55% are against it, and 4% remain undecided.

At the same time, 58% consider that a lockdown would be an effective way to counteract the Covid-19; 39% deem it ineffective; and 3% were undecided.

Besides, a total of 58% support a lockdown for New Year holidays, 40% - do not support such an idea; while 2% are undecided.

Besides, 44% of pollees support imposition of the 'weekend' quarantine; 54% - do not support it, and 2% are undecided.

The poll was conducted among 2,500 adult respondents from all regions of Ukraine except for the temporarily occupied territories of the Russia-annexed Crimea and Donbas in the period of November 28-30.

The sampling error does not exceed 2%.

On December 3, the number of newly-registered Covid-19 cases in Ukraine rose by 15,131 over December 2 to 787,891, and the number of deaths decreased by 235 over December 2 to 13,195; at the same time, the number of new cases rose by 4.4%, and the number of new lethal cases decreased by 3.3%.

According to the report, as at the morning of December 4, there were 787,891 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases registered in Ukraine, the number included 13,195 lethal cases; besides, 397,809 people had recovered.

On December 3, a total of 15,131 new cases of the disease were recorded, 235 people died, and 13,383 people recovered.

Therefore, as at December 3, the indicator of newly-infected people was higher than the number of those, who recovered (15,131 vs 13,383).

The number of the active sick (only those sick) as at December 4, made 376,887 people, up 0.4% day over day.

Since the start of the epidemic, the largest number of coronavirus-infected people has been registered in the city of Kyiv (76,750), Kharkiv region (58,030), and Odesa region (49,131).