Health Ministry Hopes To Conduct 1 Million Coronavirus Antigen Tests A Month

The Health Ministry hopes to conduct 1 million tests for coronavirus antigen a month.

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

According to the minister, coronavirus antigen express-tests must be used at all levels of medical care provision.

He said that over 260,000 such tests had already been distributed among regions.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, the Medical Procurements of Ukraine state-run enterprise has signed a contract with the Sanimed-M Company on procurement of 1.5 million sets of express-tests for coronavirus antigen SARS-CoV-2 for UAH 222.75 million; as well as with the Labsvit company on procurement of 333,300 sets of such tests SARS-CoV-2 for UAH 69.998 million.

On December 29, the number of newly-registered Covid-19 cases in Ukraine rose by 7,986 over December 28 to 1,045,348, and the number of deaths increased by 243 over December 28 to 18,324; at the same time, the number of new cases rose by 14.3%, and the number of new lethal cases rose 4.7%.

According to the report, as at the morning of December 30, there were 1,045,348 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases registered in Ukraine, the number included 18,324 lethal cases; besides, 698,190 people had recovered.

On December 29, a total of 7,986 new cases of the disease were recorded, 243 people died, and 16,355 people recovered.

Therefore, as at December 29, the indicator of newly-infected people was lower than the number of those, who recovered (7,986 vs 16,355).

As at the morning of December 30, the overall number of those, who are staying ill with the Covid-19 (less the recovered and died) made 347,158, up 2.9% over December 29.