Minister talks of health care system’s cap in tackling inflow of COVID patients

Up to 90,000 hospital beds could be allocated for those who have contracted coronavirus.

That’s according to Minister of Health Viktor Liashko who reported to the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Health, Medical Care, and Medical Insurance on Wednesday, Ukrinform reports.

“We have three scenarios of coronavirus development in Ukraine – optimistic, moderate. and pessimistic. By each of these scenarios, we have sufficient bed stock to be deployed. Speaking of maximum numbers, we will need to provide some 82,000 beds, which we already had in reserve at year-start, and we potentially understand that we can deploy up to 90,000, but then it is a matter of critical impact on the health care system as we will once again be suspending scheduled hospitalizations to prioritize COVID patients,” Liashko said.

As of today, the minister adds, 38,000 beds have been deployed exclusively for COVID-19 patients, of which more than 37,000, that is, over 90%, have an oxygen supply.

According to the Minister, currently about 75% of COVID-19 patients require hospitalization, of whom 65% need oxygen support.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, more than 10 million COVID-19 vaccine jabs have been administered in Ukraine since the launch of the inoculation campaign. For the past 24 hours, on September 7, almost 150,000 people have been vaccinated.

Throughout the pandemic, 2,303,276 Ukrainians contracted COVID-19, of whom 2,216,017 recovered and 54,114 died.

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