Ukraine should increase fivefold its daily rate of COVID-19 testing, say experts with the Kyiv School of Economics.
The results of the corresponding modeling were presented in Kyiv on Friday, November 20.
"The testing system in Ukraine is out of order – Ukraine can't control the spread of the virus and barely has time to diagnose cases when patients have already been hospitalized. This is evidenced by the numbers," said Pavlo Kovtonyuk, head of the Health Economics Center at the Kyiv School of Economics.
Read alsoAnalysts forecast from 17,000 to 33,000 COVID-19 deaths in Ukraine by year-endThe expert believes, to gain control of the COVID-19 spread with 11,000 new cases per day, some 220,000 PCR tests should be run daily:
"Today's level of testing – an average of 40,000 PCR tests per day – is sufficient to control the situation with 2,000 new daily cases."
Relatively good rates in terms of daily tests are observed only in Kyiv, Vinnytsia, and Kirovohrad regions.
In Sumy, Poltava, and Zhytomyr regions, the situation has turned extremely critical. Almost every second test returns positive.
Coronavirus in Ukraine: Latest
Over the past day, 14,575 new cases were detected.
Since the onset of the pandemic, 598 085 people have contracted the coronavirus in Ukraine, of whom 274,324 recovered and 10,598 died.
A total of 4,108,825 PCR tests have been performed.
