Ukrainian Deputy Health Minister and Chief Medical Officer Viktor Liashko says the government decided to extend the quarantine in Ukraine, since up to 100,000 people might die from COVID-19 complications should all restrictions have been lifted from May 11.
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"Today we cannot completely release the whole country from quarantine, because there are several scenarios. According to one of them, there might be up to 100,000 deaths if we had cancelled all restrictions on May 11," he told a Svoboda Slova [Freedom of Speech] panel show on Ukraine's ICTV channel on May 4, 2020.
Liashko said that, given the capacity of the Ukrainian healthcare system to cope with the number of COVID-19 patients, the Health Ministry had decided to gradually balance between economic recovery and anti-epidemiological measures.
"After all, the loss of economy from two to three months of the quarantine cannot be compared with the loss of human lives the country might face if the government had not responded," the official said.
