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Coronavirus pandemic

PACE may cancel spring session due to coronavirus outbreak

The lawmaker informed that PACE had already called off a visit to Russia by rapporteurs from a monitoring commission, which was expected to take place in late March

© Mikhail Japaridze/TASS

MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) may cancel its spring session due to the coronavirus outbreak, Chairman of the Russian State Duma (the lower house of parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee Leonid Slutsky wrote on Telegram on Thursday.

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WHO chief officially characterizes COVID-19 as a pandemic

"The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe may cancel its spring session scheduled to be held in Strasbourg on April 20-24. No formal decision has been made yet but a warning of a possible cancellation has been published," he pointed out.

Slutsky added that PACE had already called off a visit to Russia by rapporteurs from a monitoring commission, which was expected to take place in late March.

The senior Russian lawmaker noted that if the April session was eventually canceled, "it would be a logical step following the World Health Organization’s move to declare a global pandemic, and also given the need to take precautionary measures to prevent the virus from spreading further."

Coronavirus outbreak

Read also

In late December 2019, Chinese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, central China. Since then, coronavirus cases have been reported in more than 120 countries, including Russia. Most cases outside of China have been recorded in South Korea, Iran and Italy.

The WHO has declared the outbreak a global pandemic as more than 118,000 people have been infected around the world and about 4,300 have died of it. Russia has so far confirmed 28 coronavirus cases.

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