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Deputy Minister of Health of Ukraine Chief Medical Officer Viktor Lyashko said the government has limited passenger traffic to restrict population migration, leading to more contacts and therefore potentially the growth of new infections .
The Ukrainian government stopped the operation of public transport not so much because of the probability of coronavirus infection in the transport itself, but rather to stop the migration of the population. This was announced on May 8 on the television channel “Ukraine 24” by the Deputy Minister of Health, Chief Medical Officer for Health, Viktor Lyashko.
“Why can’t we start public transportation right away? I’m not so concerned about the problem of infection, but rather about the accessibility and internal migration of the population. Instead of isolating themselves, people who have freely moving transportation they will even visit certain places without urgent need “- said Lyashko
In his opinion, if transportation is launched right now, “older people will go to the same markets for excursions.”
“We notice this and we know how it happens. A huge migration leads to the fact that all quarantine principles are crumbling.” – Lyashko pointed out.
He stressed that this applies to interregional passenger traffic and interurban traffic.
“As to long distance communication … Now we see many offices whose work is not prohibited. They work remotely, they hold online meetings. As soon as public transportation departs, more employees will go to the offices, “Online meetings will become offline meetings, this will lead to increased contacts, reduced social distance, and the potential for infection to increase.” – The vice minister explained.
Quarantine in Ukraine was introduced on March 12. Due to the spread of coronavirus infection, COVID-19 banned mass events, closed shopping malls, stores (except supermarkets and pharmacies), restaurants, cafes, gyms, beauty salons, and also limits the operation of transportation. In Kiev, Kharkov and the Dnieper on March 17. closed the subway. In many cities, only doctors, police, rescuers, and employees of critical infrastructure companies can now use public transportation.
On May 5, Prime Minister Denis Shmygal said that the metro in Ukraine will open in two stages, but will not work in the near future.
Restrictive measures will be applied at least Until May 22, however, since May 11, Ukraine began the first stage of weakening the quarantine (there are five in total). Citizens can now visit parks and squares. In addition, it is allowed to open stores that sell non-food products, beauty salons and notaries.
The prime minister said that after the quarantine is relaxed, the number of public transport units in the settlements should be increased, but the security issue should be taken into account.
According to exit plan proposed by the government from quarantine, it is planned to allow inter-urban transportation communication within the region in the third stage of quarantine mitigation (to be launched, if for 10 consecutive days the number of people recovered from COVID-19 Ukrainians will be two or more times the number of new cases of the disease, and hospitals will be occupied by patients with coronavirus infection in less than 10%). All terrain onPublic transport and the subway want to launch in the fourth stage, when the number of new infections is daily. within 10 days will not exceed five per area. The Prime Minister did not rule out the possibility that the second, third and fourth stages of leaving quarantine could start simultaneously.
As of May 11, the coronavirus was confirmed in 15,648 Ukrainians, 408 of them died and 3,288 recovered.
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