Ukraine's underfunded hospitals are struggling to keep up with the surgeon patient numbers amid the spike Frontline medical workers are among those suffering most.

E knew that I'd get sick eventually.

When I got the news that I was infected, it was such a blow.

I cried.

I've done all I could to stay safe.

This place is my baby.

No one ever saw me here without a mask.

My name is Elena Craft.

Chuck.

I'm a senior doctor here in the hospital in the U Bar.

Most of the doctors and nurses here have gone through co vid Way had a big outbreak here in the town, with as many as 58 new patients in just one day.

Many of them were very ill.

I'm a neuropathologist by training, but I had to learn how to operate a ventilator.

There was no choice.

A patient was dying and I didn't know what to do.

I did some reading and called my husband, who's an anesthetist.

He was telling me what to do over the phone, on the loudspeaker, on it worked.

It's hard to explain just how happy I waas that's one of my father's friends is in our intensive care unit right now.

You're always aware that your own parents could soon be patients here on.

Then I got infected myself.

It was scary, really scary.

E had seen what covert can do.

E was lucky.

I didn't get pneumonia and was back at work two weeks later.

Our main problem is that people come in too late, many with very serious pneumonia.

Some tell you they don't have money.

Others don't believe Cove.

It even exists.

They say.

It's just the flu thing.

Most definitely isn't the flu.

The most precious thing right now is oxygen.

You can see the patients hands stretching out for the masks.

You can see how desperately they need it.

You see how they come to life once they get it, even trying to turn the dial up on their own E goto bed imagining what would happen if we run out of oxygen supplies, I'm sure it will happen eventually.

Will we have to slam the doors shut in patients faces and tell them we've run out.

I'm joined now by D W correspondent Nick Connolly in Kiev makes uM, very dramatic scenes there.

Tell us how dramatic is the situation in hospitals across the country?

Good morning record.

What is extraordinary, Difficult.

We've seen cases here up to about 13, 14,000 new cases every day.

That's double what it was just a month ago on that hospital, even though maybe the conditions there could look basic to someone who's more used to hospital settings in Western Europe or North America.

That is a pretty good, pretty well resource hospital by the standards off provincial Ukraine.

This is really a country with huge discrepancies between the big cities on the smaller towns and villages, as we heard there from that doctor, oxygen is a big problem with.

This is not a disease that doctors were able to treat right now.

This is about keeping people going while their body deals with this viral infection.

And that doctor told us that their hospital, they their supplies of oxygen, they are lasting for a couple.

They have a extra supplies for a couple of hours.

So if those supplies, if those trucks bringing oxygen from the nearest big town were to stop, if there was cold weather and that truck were to break down.

They would really have to make choices about who would get oxygen.

It's not about that.

Just about that.

It's also about medical staff.

This is a country where doctors are not paid well even by local standards.

Thousands of doctors have left for neighboring countries on there really running out of people to look after all these people.

That doctor in our report, she is a neurologist having to learn on the job while saving people's lives how to operate a ventilator.

So this is really a situation that isn't looking good.

And that is getting more difficult as this winter season increases.

Indeed, and we've heard that some people don't even go to hospital because they may not have the money.

How well does the health system work in general?

So in theory, people do get free medical care in practice.

Often they're expected to pay for drugs, pay for various materials.

But this wasn't a system that was particularly strong and well resourced at the best of times, so the kind of pandemic like this was obviously going to be a huge challenge.

Anyway, I think This is also a bigger problem of governance isn't just about the ability of doctors with or without resource to treat this disease.

This is about our national response in an infectious disease situation like this.

On President Alinsky, Ukraine's president would seem to have had originally good first wave of coronavirus understanding the country didn't have the resources to treat auto track traces particular effectively.

He basically closed down this country for months at a time.

In the spring, the metro here in capital Kiev was out of operation for weeks at an end, all businesses were shut on.

Now, basically, the country's decided, or the government decided that they can't afford a rerun of that.

They don't have the money to give businesses and to give employees money to stay at home.

And so we now have a situation where there's basically kind of symbolic quarantine.

On weekends, businesses shut on weekends In practice, lots of big cities outside of Kiev have told the central government to get lost and basically continuing as usual on a lot of people thinking about their business survival and bankruptcy rather than the actual infection numbers that are jumping up here.

So very difficult winter in the weeks ahead.

Yeah, very difficult situation in D D W correspondent Nick Connolly.

Thanks very much.

Well, let's take a look at some other developments in the pandemic.

Chile has reopened its borders to international visitors after an eight month shutdown.

Arriving passengers will have to present evidence of a recent negative test and undergo a two week surveillance period.

China says it's ramped up its testing of frozen foods.

Authorities say it comes after they repeatedly found traces of the coronavirus on imported products and their packaging, and Spain says it will begin a comprehensive vaccination program in January.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says a quote substantial part of the population will be able to be vaccinated in the first three months of the year.