Ukraine's hospitals under strain, even with few virus cases

CHERNIVTSI, Ukraine (AP) — Medical workers in homemade protective masks and suits, with plastic bags over their shoes. A hospital intended for 150 coronavirus patients now holding 250. A lack of filtration systems that forces autopsies to be done outside, under the trees, instead of in the hospital morgue.

Ukraine's troubled health care system has been overwhelmed by COVID-19, even though it has reported a relatively low number of cases — 15,232 infections and 391 deaths as of Sunday.

Nowhere is the problem more evident than in western city of Chernivtsi, with over 2,268 confirmed infections in the city and the surrounding region. It is considered a hot spot of contagion, along with another western city, Ivano-Frankivsk, 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, and the capital of Kyiv.

Thousands of Ukrainians who had temporary jobs in Europe have returned home amid the pandemic and some brought the virus back with them.

As COVID-19 patients flood into the struggling hospitals, some doctors and nurses must buy their own protective gear or use improvised equipment. Many of them are getting sick: medical workers account for about a fifth of all coronavirus cases in Ukraine.

“My soul is crying!” said Mykola Sharakhlitsky, an anesthesiologist at Chernivtsi’s main hospital as he cleaned a protective suit. “We are experiencing a shortage of medical equipment and protective gear, and we all get infected as a result.”

There is not a hospital-grade ventilator for the 250 patients in the facility in Chernivtsi, a city of 266,000 people.

“I don’t believe that a single hospital in Ukraine has all it needs,” said ICU chief Kostyantyn Dronev. “We are short of everything.”

The crisis could not have struck at a worse time for Ukraine.

The country's corruption-ridden...