Health minister names condition for re-imposing tough quarantine in Ukraine

Ukrainian Health Minister Maksym Stepanov has said a tough quarantine may be re-imposed in Ukraine if more than 50-70% of all regions are included in the red zone.

"I think we will adhere to the adaptive quarantine strategy. If more than 50-70% of the regions switch to the red level, we will talk about tough quarantine throughout the country," he said during a Svoboda Slova ("Freedom of Speech") panel show on Ukraine's ICTV channel on Monday.

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• On March 12, Stepanov said the country had faced a "rather difficult period" over the spread of a new COVID-19 strain.
• So far, four regions remain in the red quarantine zone. These are Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Chernivtsi regions.
• The capital city of Kyiv and seven regions have seen excess hospitalization rates of COVID-19 patients.
• Some 9,642 new active COVID-19 cases were confirmed across the country in the past 24 hours as of March 16, 2021.
• The total number of confirmed cases is nearing 1.5 million while Ukraine's population was about 41.6 million people as of January 1, 2021.