The meeting of the National Security and Defense Council was held under the chairmanship of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal informed that the government had made a decision to allocate 100 million UAH for the purchase of the first priority goods, works and services to prevent and fight coronavirus.
According to Oleksiy Danilov, the authorities worked out all scenarios and possible risks associated with coronavirus in time. Three cases of coronavirus disease have been reported in Ukraine: one case in the Zhytomyr region, two cases in Chernivtsi. Unfortunately, the resident of the Zhytomyr region died due to complications.
NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said that the National Security and Defense Council had decided to close the Ukrainian border for foreign nationals for two weeks within 48 hours.
According to him, a bill has already been prepared to regulate the implementation of such purchases without applying the procedures stipulated by the Law of Ukraine "On Public Procurement" for the possibility of prompt response to the situation in the country.
The participants of the meeting discussed the issue of providing the population with medical masks.
The President stressed that all pharmacies should be provided with the required number of medical masks.
“There must be masks on the shelves of pharmacies. This is the best message, the best communication instead of words when there are all the items on the shelves. Whether people buy them or not, they should be available,” the Head of State said.
Deputy Minister of Health, Chief Sanitary Doctor of Ukraine Viktor Lyashko noted that healthcare facilities would receive 10 million medical masks.
The participants of the meeting heard the information about providing healthcare facilities with tests for coronavirus. Viktor Lyashko informed that about 100,000 express test kits are planned to be purchased.
"They will be used in healthcare facilities when introducing a mask regime in the institution," Viktor Lyashko said.
"At the same time, we agreed with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Defense to use mobile laboratories with PCR machines (polymerase chain reaction - ed.). In those regions where we will have an outbreak or there will be overloaded laboratories, we will move the laboratory, put it there and conduct research,” Viktor Lyashko stressed.