The Government's restrictive quarantine measures are aimed at preventing a simultaneous critical number of sick people in need of intensive care and thus preventing overload on healthcare facilities, as is the case in European countries. This was emphasized by Deputy Minister of Health, Chief State Sanitary Doctor of Ukraine Viktor Liashko during a briefing on measures to combat the spread of coronavirus infection on April 10.

"The restrictive measures put in place by the Government are aimed at preventing the collapse of the infrastructure and the healthcare system, while the number of simultaneously infected people with a coronavirus should not be too high," said Viktor Liashko.

According to him, testing is conducted to anyone who has symptoms characteristic of coronavirus disease, as well as to anyone who has returned from abroad and has been in contact with patients with COVID-19.

"We have clear algorithms and perform diagnostic testing to all those who need it to identify and localize contact persons in a timely and qualitative way so that there is no spread of the disease on the territory of Ukraine," Viktor Liashko said.

Besides, according to him, all patients with pneumonia undergo testing. "We are testing all patients with pneumonia in infectious and other hospitals," said the Deputy Minister.

He added that PCR testing is conducted in all cases with suspected coronavirus disease. During 24 hours, 961 medical teams have conducted PCR sampling responding to the emergency calls and 1,880 biological material samples were collected.

At that, Viktor Liashko stressed that in case of unjustified refusal to conduct testing, one should call the Ministry of Health hotline at 0 800 505 201. Apart from that, citizens who do not receive testing results within three to four days after sampling can call this hotline.

According to the Chief State Sanitary Doctor, private laboratories can now also perform testing, meeting established requirements and reporting on analysis results. "Private laboratories can purchase test systems if they meet the requirements of biosecurity and have the right to work with a second-class pathogen," he said, adding that express tests can also be sold in pharmacies - "this is an issue of the business entity that owns this pharmacy."

Viktor Liashko also informed that as of today, 48 artificial lung ventilation devices have been used to provide assistance to patients with coronavirus disease, which is 2.7% of all prepared lung ventilators equipped in hospitals.

The Deputy Minister informed that today the Ministry of Health experts had departed on inspection to Ivano-Frankivsk region, which is leading in the number of deaths from COVID-19 disease.

As of 9:00 am on April 10 in Ukraine, 2,203 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19, 69 of them caused death, 61 patients recovered. In the past 24 hours, 311 new cases were recorded. For the previous day, 2,929 samples were tested.