The scientists of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute published the results of a study of the growth of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in August this year. The situation takes on an unexpectedly violent and protracted character. In July-August 2020, the health care system of Ukraine and society as a whole failed to stop the growth of the pandemic, which led to an unexpectedly high level of daily infections, which is monotonously approaching the mark of 2,000 people. In a number of regions of Ukraine, the process of spreading COVID-19 began to become uncontrolled. At the same time, the mortality rate from COVID-19 in Ukraine is relatively low compared to other European countries and is at 2.5%. This is due to the fact that, despite the increase in the number of PCR tests, more asymptomatic or mild cases of the disease are detected compared to March - April 2020.

It is shown that the correlation coefficient between the number of daily PCR tests and the number of daily infected persons is quite high (K = 0.863). Provided that the number of PCR tests increases as of the end of August - first half of September 2020, the number of detected patients may reach 110-120 thousand.

The results of predictive modelling of the spread of the disease are obtained by using many different methods, namely: similarity method in mathematical modelling; recurrent neural network (LSTM); neural network Back Propagation (BPNN). These results show that in the period from 17 to 27.08.2020 prediction trends have high volatility and deteriorating of the ratio of the number of new patients and the number of recovered. The number of new patients diagnosed daily in the second half of August can range from 1,200 to 2,200 people per day in the optimistic scenario and 1,300 to 2,800 in the pessimistic scenario.

In the regional context, the number of oblasts and individual districts of Ukraine that do not meet quarantine norms continues to grow, with a pronounced tendency to move from the west of the country to the east. In 10 oblasts of Ukraine and the city of Kyiv, the rates of detecting new patients have been exceeded, and in some of them the occupancy of beds in hospitals is becoming critical.

This trend in the spread of coronavirus can only be slowed by a return to harder restrictive measures, especially at the beginning of the school year. The final overcoming of the disease is possible only as a result of the gradual emergence of collective human immunity and mass vaccination of the population. Research centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and other countries are currently working hard to find effective vaccines. According to the representatives of these centres, experimental samples of vaccines are already being studied, and the practical application of the invented drugs is possible in late 2020 - early 2021.

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