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St. Petersburg’s court rules forcible isolation of second patient escaping quarantine

Four patients in total left the hospital without permission, two of whom later came back

ST. PETERSBURG, February 19. /TASS/. The Nevsky District Court in the Russian second-largest city of St. Petersburg has granted the complaint filed by the city’s chief sanitary medical official asking to forcibly isolate Anna Rybakova, who had escaped coronavirus quarantine after returning from China, TASS reported on Wednesday.

"The court ruled to grant the administrative complaint," Judge Svetlana Petiy said.

According to the court order, Anna Rybakova will be quarantined in a hospital until having been tested negative minimum twice for the novel coronavirus. Rybakova skipped the court hearing, which was held behind closed doors and the judge read out only the operative part of the judgement.

Last week, St. Petersburg’s chief sanitary doctor Natalia Bashketova filed a lawsuit in court demanding that Anna Rybakova, who returned from China in early February, should be examined mandatorily, including tests for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The chief sanitary official’s lawsuit says that Rybakova should be forcibly isolated at the Botkin Infectious Diseases Hospital.

The first lawsuit was submitted last week to St. Petersburg’s Petrogradsky District Court against another woman, Alla Ilyina, who had been admitted to the infectious disease hospital but later also escaped quarantine. Four patients in total left the hospital without permission, but two of them later came back. Rybakova and Ilyina did not follow suit.

On February 17, the Petrogradsky District Court sustained a lawsuit filed by the city’s chief sanitary doctor and ruled Ilyina be taken back to hospital for mandatory examination.

In late December 2019, a pneumonia outbreak caused by the COVID-19 virus (previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in China’s city of Wuhan, an economic and industrial megacity with a population of 11 million. The World Health Organization declared the new coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, characterizing it as an epidemic with multiple locations. According to the latest reports, China has confirmed over 74,100 cases of patients infected with the novel coronavirus. The virus’ death toll has hit more than 2,000, yet more than 14,300 patients have recovered from the disease.