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Only 11 patients contracted coronavirus inside Russia — chief sanitary doctor

Some 90% of cases were brought from abroad

Russian chief sanitary doctor and head of the consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova Dmitry Astakhov/POOL/TASS

Russian chief sanitary doctor and head of the consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova

© Dmitry Astakhov/POOL/TASS

MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/. Only 11 coronavirus patients in Russia contracted the infection inside the country, the rest are imported cases, Russian chief sanitary doctor and head of the consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova said on Friday.

"Ninety percent of the infections cases confirmed in Russia were brought from abroad. Only 11 people contracted the infection inside Russia and each of them had very close contacts with the one who had brought the virus from abroad," she said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station.

A pneumonia outbreak caused by the COVID-19 virus (previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in China’s city of Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center with a population of 12 million, in late December 2019. Cases of the new coronavirus have also been reported from more than 140 countries and territories, including Russia, which by now has 253 cases. The World Health Organization says that the novel coronavirus cases across the globe have exceeded 240,000, with more than 10,000 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially described the situation with the novel coronavirus as a pandemic. In order to keep the citizens updated on the coronavirus situation in Russia, the government has launched a website at http://···············.··.

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