18 September 2020, Friday, 13:54 185

Health Ministry Considering Attraction Of Private Laboratories To Conduction Of Coronavirus Tests At Budget’s Expense

Editor: Daria Zubkova

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The Health Ministry is considering the possibility to attract private laboratories to conduction of coronavirus tests at the expense of the state budget funds.

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

Stepanov noted that currently, the testing at state-owned laboratories is twice as cheap than at the private institutions.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, the Health Ministry of Ukraine has cancelled mandatory polymerase chain reaction tests (PCR) for the people discharged from two-week self-isolation.

Besides, it was decided that PCR-tests are conducted during planned hospitalization only if a patient has features of acute respiratory viral infection.

Stepanov says that laboratories had sufficient number of testing systems to diagnose the coronavirus infection via PCR method.

On September 17, the number of newly-registered Covid-19 cases in Ukraine increased by 3,228 over September 16 to 169,472, and the number of deaths rose by 68 over September 16 to 3,468; at the same time, the number of new cases decreased by 9.9% and the number of new lethal cases increased by 13.3%.

According to the report, as at the morning of September 18, there were 169,472 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases registered in Ukraine, the number included 3,468 lethal cases; besides, 75,486 people had recovered.

On September 17, a total of 3,228 new coronavirus cases were registered, 1,573 people recovered, and 68 people died.

Therefore, on September 17, the indicator of newly-infected people exceeded the number of those, who recovered (3,228 vs 1,573).

As at the morning of September 18, the number of active sick (less those, who recovered and died) made 90,518, up 1.8% over September 17.

Since the start of the epidemic, the largest number of coronavirus-infected people has been registered in the city of Kyiv (18,740), Lviv region (17,869), and Kharkiv region (14,264).