Ukraine's effort to quarantine more than 70 people evacuated from China over the new virus outbreak has plunged into chaos, as residents opposing the move hurled stones at the evacuees and clashed with police.

Officials deplored Thursday's violence and the country's health minister pledged to share evacuees' quarantine for two weeks in a bid to reassure protesters who fear they could be infected.

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Buses carrying evacuees were finally able to reach the designated place of quarantine after hours of clashes. The masked evacuees, exhausted by the long journey, were peeking through bus windows as they drove slowly under a heavy police escort.

Stones shattered a window in one of the buses but the evacuees appeared unhurt.

Since the early morning, several hundred residents of the village of Novi Sanzhary in Ukraine's central Poltava region had cut off the road to a sanitarium intended to host the evacuees, fearing they could become infected.

Demonstrators, some of whom appeared drunk, put up road blocks, burned tyres and clashed with riot police who moved to clear access. One protester tried to ram police lines with his car.

Nine police officers and one civilian were hospitalised, the regional police said in a statement.

Ukrainian police said 24 protesters were detained. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who personally visited the site to try to calm the crowd, said he was shocked by the aggression.

"What we saw was shameful," he said in televised remarks. "It was one of the biggest disappointments in my life."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weighed in, saying the protests showed "not the best side of our character".

He tried to reassure people that the quarantined evacuees would not pose any danger to residents.

In a statement published on his Facebook page, Zelenskyy said the people evacuated from China were healthy and would live in a closed medical centre run by the National Guard in the village as a precaution.

"In the next two weeks it will probably be the most-guarded facility in the country," Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine's health minister, Zoryana Skaletska, said she would join the evacuees in quarantine for two weeks to help assuage villagers' concerns. She urged residents to show sympathy and support for the evacuees and emphasised that the quarantine facility fully conformed with international standards.

"I was shocked by the panic, rejection, negative feelings and aggression," she said. "It was even a greater shock for the people who were evacuated from China."

But municipal legislators in the village vowed to continue opposing the evacuation, saying that the sanitarium's sewage system was linked to the one in the village and ended up in a nearby wastewater facility.

"We can't allow putting the health and life of local residents at risk, and demand that top officials take urgent moves to prevent people from China from being put here," they said in a statement.

Amid the clashes between residents and police, Ukraine's Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said he would immediately fly to the site to personally oversee things.