At least 135,000 Russians have contracted Corona. Because there is a lack of masks and infected people are not isolated, more and more doctors and nurses are among them.
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Hospitals became centers of infection: medical personnel in St. Petersburg. (EPA / ANATOLY MALTSEV)
At the beginning of May, house arrest in Russia is particularly difficult. One holiday follows the next, the day of work and spring, the day of victory. But instead of sitting on picnic blankets outside, many Russians are still in isolation. The Muscovites have only been allowed out for five weeks in exceptional cases. Going for a walk, if only for an hour, is not one of them.
Persevere, Vladimir Putin swore by the Russians before May Day. “The most intense phase” of the epidemic is now imminent, and according to experts, the climax is “still ahead of us”. Two days later, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin reported to the President via video, that he had tested positive for Sars-CoV-2. “It can happen to anyone,” Putin replied as if in warning.
On Saturday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote in his blog that at least two percent of the 12.5 million Muscovites were infected. That would be around 250,000 people, far more than the official statistics show. According to this there are 135,000 infected people in Russia, 69,000 of them in the capital.
Health system is overwhelmed
No matter which numbers are correct, the healthcare system already seems to be overwhelmed. More and more doctors, nurses and paramedics are turning to the media, often anonymously. Some record videos and complain that protective clothing is missing, that it is not tested, and that colleagues get sick. Because doctors cannot protect themselves from infection, hospitals have become the main sources of infection. Clinics were cordoned off in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Ufa, Komi.
Patients who should be discharged are not allowed to go home, doctors have to stay there for weeks. Already in mid-March there were signals that medical personnel were not adequately protected, says Andrei Konowal from the Dejstwie union. The employees “either get sick or quit”.
Putin admits that masks, breathing equipment and protective suits are not enough.
In Ufa, doctors videotaped the government publicly and requested an investigation. The clinic management, they suspect, reacted too late to the outbreak, causing the hospital to become the focus of infection for the entire region. In St. Petersburg, among other clinics, the orthopedic Wreden hospital with 800 beds was placed in quarantine. The online newspaper “Fontanka” described the clinic as a “hard version of the Diamond Princess”, the cruise ship with hundreds of infected passengers off the coast of Tokyo.
Dmitri Ptaschnikow heads the surgical department at Wreden-Spital, he operates on spinal column. He kept an Instagram video diary out of the quarantine. In his department, which has little else to do with infectious diseases, 32 patients and 10 employees persevered. “All employees are sick today,” he says in the video from April 20. “9 out of 10 have pneumonia.”
A dozen patients were also diagnosed with pneumonia. Ptashnikov says that the means of protection were not sufficient, but also not useful, as long as the sick and the non-sick shared a department. «We cook here in our own juice.
–Covid-19 fell ill: Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin logs out of President Putin via video.
Photo: Alexei Druzhinin / AP
The authorities know that the lawsuits are justified. At his last video conference with the governors, Putin listed how many masks, breathing apparatuses and protective suits had been produced. But he also admitted that it was not enough. His spokesman Dmitri Peskow had warned doctors and nurses not to contact the media, but the official authorities if something was missing.
It is obviously missing everywhere. A Moscow nurse reports in a video that she has quit – just like a dozen colleagues. They did not feel adequately protected and underpaid in the Kommunarka infection hospital. In the Voronezh area, a paramedic complained about the Facebook counterpart V-contacts that he would be sent to feverish patients without protective clothing.
Medical students help out
The paramedic later told the Meduza magazine that the police then visited him because he allegedly spreads false news. In Moscow too, doctors in ambulances complain about the lack of protective clothing and how the crews of the vehicles thin. Some report that they had to bring patients back home because there was no clinic bed available.
A lot has been saved in healthcare in recent years. Between 2013 and 2019 alone, young medical personnel were cut by more than half, according to the Vedomosti newspaper. Medical students in the clinics have been helping since May 1st, regardless of whether they want to become dentists or pediatricians. In addition, provisional hospitals are to be built in Moscow, in a car dealership, on an exhibition center. In early April, Mayor Sergei Sobjanin had promised 20,000 beds for Covid 19 patients. Now he said that there were already 17,000 infected people in Moscow clinics.
Give up lying
Alexei Erlich works in one of these clinics, the cardiologist is currently in quarantine at home. When his clinic was officially opened to corona patients, he was already infected. Doctors and patients should be protected equally – not only in clinics that are officially responsible for the treatment of Covid 19 patients, he says. One thing applies to all regions anyway: “One shouldn’t hide Corona cases. You have to give up lying. » Erlich and other doctors publish the names of the colleagues who died in connection with the pandemic on the Internet: 85 names are already on the list.
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