The Kremlin said on Saturday a “huge influx” of coronavirus patients was beginning to put a strain on hospitals in Moscow as Russia’s death toll rose to more than 100. Reuters Health reports that Moscow and many other regions have been in lockdown for nearly two weeks to stem the contagion, but officials said hospitals in the capital are still being pushed to their limit. The report says witness talk about a tailback of dozens of ambulances queuing outside a hospital handling coronavirus cases in the region immediately outside Moscow, waiting to drop off patients. One ambulance driver said he had been waiting 15 hours outside the hospital to drop off a patient suspected of having the virus.
“The situation in both Moscow and St Petersburg, but mostly in Moscow, is quite tense because the number of sick people is growing,” Kremlin spokesprson Dmitry Peskov is quoted in the report as saying. “There is a huge influx of patients. We are seeing hospitals in Moscow working extremely intensely, in heroic, emergency mode.”
Russia’s coronavirus crisis response centre said hospitals were taking all possible measures to ensure rapid admissions and that cases of ambulances needing to wait hours to drop off patients was not a systemic issue. Peskov added that it would become clearer only in the next few weeks whether the country was nearing the worst point in its outbreak.
Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, said that the city was far from reaching the peak of the outbreak, saying it was merely in its “foothills” – he said Moscow would introduce digital permits next week to control movement around the city to help enforce the lockdown. He said residents will have to request the permits, which will contain a code that identifies the holder, in order to travel using motorcycles, scooters, cars, taxi services or the city’s vast public transport network.
The report said in the early stages epidemic, Russia recorded fewer cases of the new coronavirus than many Western European countries, but its tally began to rise sharply this month. Until late March officials were saying the situation was under control and that there was no epidemic in the country.
[link url="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-russia-moscow/kremlin-says-moscow-hospitals-flooded-as-coronavirus-death-toll-passes-100-idUSKCN21T0P2"]Full Reuters Health report[/link]