Kyiv Mayor’s Coronavirus Update – September 7, 2020
07.09.2020
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: The coronavirus situation in Kyiv is not getting any better. There are new 244 infections in the past 24 hours and two more deaths. 28 people recovered.
A total of 15,276 Kyivans have been infected with the virus so far. 242 people have died and 4,759 successfully recovered.
The latest cases are 138 women (19-81 years old), 95 men (18-96 years old) and 11 kids. There are 14 more confirmed cases among medical staff. 24 patients were admitted to the city hospitals overnight.
Obolon leads, with 50 more virus transmissions overnight.
Over the past two weeks, the number of hospitalised people has grown. As of today, there are 909 COVID-19 in-patients, including 14 children.
174 of them are very sick and 234 need oxygen support. 70 people are in the ICU, 12 are put on a ventilator and 28 require non-invasive ventilation. More 97 Kyivans are admitted to hospitals with suspected coronavirus diagnosis.
The rate of pneumonia hospitalisations remains very high. In total, 460 people have been admitted to hospitals with pneumonia, 30 of them overnight.
Now, when 350,000 university students are back in classes and over 100,000 students to dormitories, I am urging the senior managers of 90 universities in Kyiv to ensure that the education facilities and student campuses strictly follow healthcare recommendations. Let us remember that clusters of new infections breaking out on campus will lead to additional strain on the healthcare system and result in strict quarantine of the education facilities.
Now a few words about how the city is preparing for the next heating season. The load on utility systems due to the coronavirus restrictions has grown and Kyivteploenergo, the municipal company which operates the Kyiv’s central heating system is accelerating efforts to ensure that the heating network operates properly and ready for the coming heating season.
It has inspected all boiler-houses and heat supply stations, repaired 6,500 pipeline breaks and by the year-end would replace over 100 km of the badly damaged heating pipelines.
A special housing and utility inspection will continue to inspect the homes and heating systems and check the quality and progress of the repair, maintenance work and preparations which are nearing completion.
I am repeatedly asked about the compliance checks in Kyiv.
Responsibility to administer the compliance of businesses and residents with the official healthcare recommendation rests with the national police. For its part, in late May the municipal authority has established special patrols consisting of the police officers, municipal guards and officials of the National Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection who conduct spot-checks at food facilities and markets. Overall, the patrols have conducted over 5,000 compliance checks and issued almost 900 penalty notices.
Again, I want to stress that much depends on our awareness and willingness to comply!
The COVID-19 transmission rate is nowhere near as low as we might hope. We all should play our part to help the authorities prevent the new spikes and avoid the new lockdown.