KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine registered a record daily high of 16,669 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, health minister Maksym Stepanov said on Thursday.
The previous high of 16,294 cases was on Nov. 28.
Stepanov said in Facebook post a record 363 coronavirus-related deaths were registered over Wednesday, exceeding the previous high of 342 cases on Tuesday.
The country of 41 million people has been hit by a sharp rise in coronavirus cases in recent weeks that Prime Minister Denys Shmygal has described as a third wave of the pandemic.
Ukraine has reported 1,596,575 coronavirus cases during the course of the pandemic and 31,135 deaths.
Stepanov said 18,561 Ukrainians got the first shot of COVID-19 vaccines and the total number of vaccinations reached 155,587 so far.
Ukraine received 500,000 doses of India-made AstraZeneca vaccine CoviShield in February. It also expects to receive the first batch of China’s Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine later on Thursday.
But local state Medical Procurement Agency (MPA) said it cannot accept a batch because the local supplier did not provide the required documents.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Tom Hogue)
