MOSCOW, March 11./TASS/. The Russian coronavirus task force has issued recommendations to the federal and regional authorities to restrict public gatherings.
"The federal executive authorities and executive agencies of the Russian Federation’s regions have received recommendations to cut the number of public events, including business, sports, cultural and entertainment ones, and to hold them in the video format wherever possible or without spectators, considering it possible to hold only vitally important and urgent events," the report said.
Earlier, the Moscow authorities suspended public gatherings and opened a medical center for people with suspected coronavirus.
According to the task force, 28 coronavirus cases are reported in Russia as of Wednesday. Twenty-five of them are Russian nationals returning from Italy. Besides, there are two Chinese nationals and one Italian among the coronavirus patients in Russia. Two Chinese nationals and a Russian citizen have been discharged from hospital. The Russian nationals evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan have recovered.
A pneumonia outbreak caused by the COVID-19 virus was reported in China’s Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center, in late December 2019. Besides China, major coronavirus outbreaks have been reported in South Korea, Iran and Italy.
More than 100 countries have reported confirmed coronavirus cases. Over 110,000 coronavirus cases and more than 4,000 deaths have been confirmed in the world so far.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially characterized the situation with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) as a pandemic, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva on Wednesday.