(Bloomberg) — While President Vladimir Putin insists Russia is being open about coronavirus and that the situation is “under control,” officials are only now ramping up testing.
The true spread of the disease will be known in the next two weeks, according to a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue is sensitive. For now, Russia still hopes to avoid a catastrophe like in Italy, the official said.
“A stock of 700,000 testing systems has been created,” Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told a government meeting Thursday. They’ll be sent to every Russian region and data on results will be collected centrally, he said.
Russia, with around 146 million people, has declared only 253 coronavirus cases as of Friday, and no deaths have been attributed to the disease so far. Still, official statistics show a 37% spike in pneumonia cases in Moscow in January compared to last year, RBC newspaper reported.
“There are more cases of the virus in the population than they say,” said Alexei Kurinny, a Communist lawmaker who’s on the health committee of the lower house of parliament. “If we don’t get a detailed picture today — and without total testing we won’t get it — we won’t be able to control the spread.”
Russia has tightened restrictions on movement. The public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, on Thursday ordered 14-day quarantines for people entering the country, a day after the government banned foreign visitors until May 1. Schools are closing nationwide, while Moscow officials have banned gatherings of more than 50 people.
Early Stage
Existing tests aren’t very sensitive and may not be detecting the coronavirus in its crucial early stage, according to the Moscow-based PCR News website, which specializes in biotechnologies and medical testing. “Once the private sector starts to carry out tests, we’ll know for sure what is going on,” Editor-in-Chief Alexei Torgashev said.
Russia may have lost valuable time by limiting testing so far to people with symptoms who’d returned from virus-hit areas, and their contacts, according to Jeremy Rossman, a senior lecturer in virology at the University of Kent in the U.K.
“If all you do is slow the virus, you will still get to the point where the hospital infrastructure will be overstretched,” he said.
A surge in pneumonia cases that aren’t being tested for coronavirus is already straining the nation’s hospitals, according to the Alliance of Doctors, an independent medical trade union set up by Kremlin opponent Alexey Navalny.
“The most important thing now is mass testing of all suspected cases,” Nikolay Gerasimenko, a lawmaker in the ruling United Russia party who also sits on the health committee. “The faster we do this, the better it will be.”
(Updates number of cases in fourth paragraph)
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