Kyiv Mayor’s Coronavirus Update – October 19, 2020
19.10.2020
The mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko held a briefing providing an update on the coronavirus situation in Ukraine’s capital and the measures the city is taking to respond.
Klitschko: Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus situation in Kyiv.
There are 385 more new coronavirus cases in Kyiv in the past 24 hours, totalling 30,848. Among new infections are 189 women (age range 18-85 years), 169 men (18-85 years old) and 27 children. Also, 13 medical workers got infected. 65 new patients were admitted to hospitals overnight.
There are 10,709 recoveries from the infection, with 13 in the past 24 hours. Five more people died and the current death toll has reached 587. Desniansky district has the highest number of confirmed cases, 88.
The number of new hospital cases is also rising, reaching 1,761 today. 29 of them are children. 173 more are being treated while waiting for confirmation of the diagnosis. 367 patients are in ICUs, 621 are under oxygen therapy and 31 are put on ventilators. 560 people are hospitalised with pneumonia.
To respond to the rapid increase of COVID-19 hospitalisations municipal hospitals are adding coronavirus beds. Currently, there are almost 2,800 such beds in 22 municipal hospitals, three of which will soon begin new admissions. Those are hospitals No.18, No.12 and the Kyiv Centre for Radiation Protection. The checklist for hospital preparedness includes beds with access to piped oxygen and units with available oxygen concentrators. With this in mind, the city has allocated about ₴14 million since the beginning of the year to purchase the necessary equipment and oxygen supplies.
According to the latest direction of the Health Ministry, 80 per cent of all coronavirus beds in hospitals must have oxygen support by November 1. With this purpose, the national government has approved a ₴29.6 million infusion into the municipal hospitals but failed to simplify the public procurement procedure for oxygen retrofitting which takes about two months. Taking into account the repair time, Kyiv and other regions are going to miss the scheduled deadline altogether.
Since the assigned money has not yet come, this is hardly the kind of support we are expecting from the government. By the way, Kyiv’s appeal to the government to let the hospitals owned by the state authority admit COVID-19 Kyivans went unanswered…
Unfortunately, while doing everything possible to protect the Kyivans the municipality has to fight the coronavirus singlehandedly.
Let me remind that to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in schools the city authority strongly recommends that autumn vacation should start earlier, on October 21. Unfortunately, the current coronavirus situation in schools is upsetting. Nine schools are quarantined across the city due to the infected teachers. Students of 621 classes in 189 schools are back to remote learning. Overall, active cases in Kyiv are 605 school students and 485 teachers.
Kindergartens are in the same situation. 92 kindergartens groups in 79 facilities are temporarily closed and two more entire kindergartens are quarantined. Another two nursery schools have reopened. The current kindergarten attendance is 52%.