Ukraine has registered 4,928 new cases of COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. on Jan. 23, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to over 1.18 million.
In the past 24 hours, 13,138 COVID-19 patients have recovered and 116 have died.
A total of 942,107 people have recovered from COVID-19 and 21,778 have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the pandemic.
In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian laboratories have carried out 22,667 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 17,477 antibody tests. Over 6 million PCR tests have been conducted since the start of the pandemic.
The largest numbers of new cases have been recorded in the city of Kyiv (536), Lviv Oblast (351), Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (342), Zaporizhzhia Oblast (339) and Kharkiv Oblast (325).
Starting Jan. 14, business owners are fined if their employees or customers don’t wear face masks. The fines can range between $122 and $183.
According to the law passed by the government on Jan. 13, when employees notice a customer without a mask, they have to stop servicing them and call the police if the person refuses to put on their mask. A mask has to cover both the nose and mouth.
During the briefing on Jan. 13, Ukrainian Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said that Ukraine will be under quarantine until Feb. 28. Meanwhile, the lockdown, which started on Jan. 8 closing all non-essential businesses, will last until Jan. 24. The government said on Jan. 15 that it will not prolong the lockdown after that date.
Here’s a full list of businesses closed under the lockdown.
Stepanov said there are hundreds of people who have had COVID-19 twice. Most of them are people who were sick at the start of the pandemic and have fewer antibodies by now, he explained.
Read also: Everything to know about COVID vaccination in Ukraine
Deputy Health Minister Viktor Lyashko commented on the introduction of vaccination passports, saying that vaccinated citizens will be registered in an electronic database and then later issued with a certificate of vaccination from a doctor once vaccination passports are introduced on an international level.
According to a survey by Rating sociological group, 52% of Ukrainians would not take the coronavirus vaccine, even if it was free.
