Photos: Ukraine's hospitals under strain, even with few COVID-19 cases

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. | Above: A doctor, wearing a special suit, walks through a corridor at an intensive care unit at a regional hospital in Chernivtsi.

Ukraine's troubled health care system has been overwhelmed by COVID-19, even though it has reported a relatively low number of cases — 15,648 infections and 408 deaths as of Monday. | Above: A medical specialist checks a 5 years old girl's lung x-ray results at a hospital in Chernivtsi.

Nowhere is the problem more evident than in western city of Chernivtsi, with 2,324 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 away, and the capital, Kyiv. | Above: A nurse administers drugs to a patient with coronavirus at an ICU at a regional hospital in Chernivtsi.

Thousands of Ukrainians who had temporary jobs in Europe have returned home amid the pandemic and some brought the virus back with them. | Above: A doctor checks a patient with coronavirus with a stethoscope during evening examination at a hospital in Pochaiv.

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. | Above: A doctor speaks to a patient with coronavirus during evening examination at a hospital in Malyn.

"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." | Above: Funeral workers lower the coffin of Semen Muchka, 71, who died of coronavirus disease, into the grave at a cemetery in Krynytsya.

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 Dronyk. "We are short of everything." | Above: A doctor checks a patient with coronavirus with a stethoscope during evening examination at a hospital in Malyn.

Pathologists transport the body of a man who died of coronavirus, at the doors of the morgue in Ternopil, Ukraine.

Nadiya, right, and Andrii Muchka, daughter and son of Semen Muchka, 71, who died of coronavirus disease, wear face masks during his funeral at a cemetery in Krynytsya, Ukraine.

Medical specialists, wearing special suits to protect against coronavirus, walk through a disinfectant corridor toward intensive care unit at a regional hospital in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.

An elderly woman, a patient with coronavirus, breathes using an oxygen mask inside a hospital in Pochaiv, Ukraine.

Medical workers work with samples for a PCR test for the COVID-19 coronavirus at a hospital in Ternopil, Ukraine.

Firefighters spray chlorine in front of a hospital in Pochaiv, Ukraine.

A doctor poses for a photo after caring for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Zalishchyky, Ukraine. \

Pathologists reveal the body of a man who died of coronavirus, outside a hospital's morgue in Ternopil, Ukraine.

A medical specialist wearing a special suit to protect against coronavirus, poses for photo next to an icon at a hospital in Pochaiv, Ukraine.

Doctor Ivan Venzhynovych, wearing special suit to protect against coronavirus, poses for a photo after morning examination patients with coronavirus at a hospital in Pochaiv, Ukraine.