The incidence of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Ukraine will stabilize over the next two weeks, Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) said.

"We can expect stabilization over the next two weeks. The workload of the resources of the medical system continues to increase, but at a slower pace. The growth rate of hospitalizations has fallen by half, to 6% per week. The gap between the number of hospitalized and discharged patients has also halved and is 15%," Head of KSE Center for Health Economics Yuriy Hanychenko said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.

Hanychenko said that according to the number of detected cases per 100,000 population, Ukraine reached the maximum European level, which was observed during the autumn wave.

"Ukraine is traditionally in the five large European countries with the most critical situation with COVID-19 (Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, Romania). In Ukraine, the level of testing and case detection rates are among the worst in Europe. This week, Ukraine has already reached the third place in terms of mortality among large European countries," he said.

The expert said the daily number of deaths in the country continues to increase and is already a third higher than the average number of deaths in the previous wave.

"We expect that mortality will continue to grow for about two more weeks. [...] According to the average scenario, by the end of June 2021, we can expect up to 55,000 deaths (in total since the beginning of the pandemic). In the second quarter of 2021, the same number of deaths is expected, as over 2020. If we talk about the range, from the beginning of 2020 to the end of June 2021, we should expect from 40,000 to 75,000 deaths," Hanychenko said.

In addition, KSE recommends imposing tough lockdown in Khmelnytsky region, which has one of the highest hospitalization rates.

"More than 50% of the regions (13) should be included in the 'red' zone in terms of indicators, however, Rivne and Cherkasy regions, according to the decision of the commission on environmental safety, manmade disaster and emergency response, remained in the 'orange' zone, since the workload of oxygen beds there was not too high," he said.

The expert also said that Ukraine had fulfilled the minimum plan of 250,000 vaccinations against COVID-19 by the end of March, but with a delay of six days from the target plan. At the same time, Ukraine has one of the lowest rates of vaccination among large European countries.