If the new Omicron coronavirus strain proliferates, Russia will hope for the best but prepare for the worst, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Tuesday.
"It’s much better to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Perhaps, this should be our motto," he said, replying to a question as to which scenario, an optimistic or a pessimistic one, was the Kremlin forecasting for the Omicron situation.
"In terms of preparedness, you know that thanks to the work of our government’s crisis center, our entire logistics is ready for an extreme load on the healthcare system," TASS cited him as saying.
"[There was] a previous wave [of the pandemic], we weathered it, and the one before that, and we see that a lot of experience has been accumulated," the Kremlin official explained.
According to Putin’s press secretary, "diametrically opposing points of view among scientists on Omicron indicate that it has been insufficiently researched so far, so work is still ahead in order to understand whether it is dangerous or not." "Undoubtedly, this is a new strain, so this is a new threat," he concluded.
