Up to 12 million Ukrainians may be down with flu, other viral infections in 2009-2010 As many as 12 million people could contract flu or other acute respiratory viral infections in Ukraine in 2009-2010, Ukrainian chief public health official Oleksandr Bilovol said.

"Taking into account susceptibility to the pandemic flu virus, there is a general indicator of the number of patients, which we have calculated based on WHO [the World Health Organization] recommendations and which could amount to 25% of the entire population," Bilovol said.

"About 12 million people will be down," Bilovol said during Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's conference call with the heads of regional administrations in Kyiv on Wednesday.

These figures are based on "a tried-and-true epidemiological forecast for the 2009-2010 seasons, taking into account all the WHO's recommendations and general information about how the pandemic developed in other countries," he said.

About 1% out of the 12 million patients in Ukraine will require hospitalization, and some 18, 000 people will have to be put in intensive care, Bilovol said.

Tymoshenko instructed the heads of the regional administrations to get properly prepared based on this forecast.