Ukraine's President Hospitalized With COVID-19

By Scott Neuman

Published November 12, 2020 at 7:09 AM PST

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during a joint news briefing with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Kyiv, last month. A spokeswoman for Zelenskiy says that he has been hospitalized for COVID-19.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been hospitalized for COVID-19 after testing positive for coronavirus earlier this week, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

Zelenskiy announced Monday that he had become infected with the virus, saying he felt good and promising to self-isolate while continuing to work.

On Monday, Zelenskiy said he was running a temperature of 37.5 Celsius (99.5 Fahrenheit).

A spokeswoman told The Associated Press that the Ukraine president's symptoms were "nothing serious" but that he was being moved to a hospital in Kyiv because "there are better conditions for self-isolation and care for coronavirus patients."

The Ukrainian president's chief of staff, defense minister and finance minister have also tested positive for the virus, the AP reports.

Zelenskiy joins several other world leaders who have contracted the coronavirus, notably President Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

Ukraine, like the U.S. and a number of European countries, has experienced a wave of new coronavirus infections and COVID-19 deaths in recent weeks. Nearly 516,000 people in Ukraine have become infected since the start of the pandemic and more than 9,400 have died, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University. In the past several days, Ukraine has had record daily infections surpassing 10,000.