BISHKEK, July 22. /TASS/. A group of Russian military medics has arrived in Kyrgyzstan to assist their Kyrgyz colleagues in treating the patients infected with the coronavirus, Kyrgyz General Staff of the Armed Forces informed TASS on Wednesday.
"A special flight of Russia’s Defense Ministry arrived at the Kant airport bringing humanitarian aid as well as a group of military medics," the agency’s representative said. According to him, in all, two dozen military medics who will treat the coronavirus patients arrived in the republic with "equipment and pharmaceuticals."
As the official indicated, the Russians will provide voluntary help to their Kyrgyz colleagues, including consultations. It is planned that a plane of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry will also arrive in Bishkek soon bringing another group of 80 experienced Russian doctors, including infectious disease specialists, epidemiologists, pulmonologists, and intensive care physicians. Russian doctors will work in the republic’s capital and in Osh, the southern regional center.
The agreement to provide aid in the fight with the COVID-19 to the Kyrgyz side was made at the beginning of the month on the presidential level. It is expected that in all, the planes of the Defense and Emergencies ministries will deliver to Kyrgyzstan 150 mln rubles worth of humanitarian aid. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Russian Federation rendered voluntary aid to the Kyrgyz side multiple times, in all, supplying test-systems allowing to conduct almost 110,000 tests for the detection of the coronavirus infection.
According to the latest data, in Kyrgyzstan 28,251 cases of the coronavirus infection and community-acquired pneumonia (which in the republic is considered a complication after the infection) were registered with 1,079 fatalities. Over 2,400 healthcare workers are among the infected. Recently, more than a thousand of new cases of infection and approximately 30-80 fatalities are recorded daily. In the middle of July the republic came to occupy the first place worldwide in the coronavirus-related fatalities per 100,000 of the population.
The epidemiologic situation in Kyrgyzstan has escalated at the end of June when the number of infections began to increase drastically. Due to the acute shortage of doctors, medical school faculty, residents and interns were also enlisted to treat patients as well as the volunteering doctors with Kyrgyz and Russian citizenship arriving from Russia. Students of medical schools and colleges work as volunteers providing medical aid to patients in the hospitals and at home. Due to the increase in the number of infections in the country, athletic and industrial facilities, bakeries, resorts, hotels, and mosques were converted into hospitals and observation facilities. The largest hospital has been opened on the premises of the former US air base near the capital Manas airport.