The coronavirus situation in Russia is stabilizing, sanitary watchdog chief Anna Popova said during a conference at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences on Monday.
"As for testing… Russia has remained in fifth place for two weeks and earlier was in third place. However, given the difficult coronavirus situation in France and Italy, our colleagues had to increase the number of tests. As you can see, Russia currently is in 87th position in terms of daily cases. We are at a point where the situation is stabilizing," she emphasized.
According to Popova, there are three models of responding to the coronavirus situation depending on the country: proactive, delayed and passive. "It is perfectly clear that the restrictions that were taken in Russia in order to prevent the infection from spreading provided us with an advantage and even at the peak of the pandemic, the number of daily cases here was lower than in other countries," she pointed out.
The watchdog chief said earlier that the rate of decline in new COVID-19 cases had slowed in Russia. In particular, the weekly number of new cases dropped by no more than 1.5% in the three weeks before April 12.
Special coronavirus arrangements and special anti-coronavirus rules should be developed for cities with a population of more than two million, Anna Popova said.
"We must work out special arrangements and special rules for metropolitan areas, that is cities with a population of over two, three, or five million, even more so for Moscow with its ten million residents," TASS cited her as saying.
According to Popova, Moscow and the second largest city of St. Petersburg are coping with the coronavirus pandemic much better than many other huge urban centers worldwide. "The morbidity rate in capitals and big cities everywhere in the world is typically double or even higher than across the country. Russia is no exclusion. But I would like to say that Moscow and St. Petersburg are coping with the situation much better than a range of other capitals in other countries," she stressed.
