MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. Many workers near Belokamenka have been registered as infected with the coronavirus infection (CIVID-19). Mayor Andrei Chibis addressed the federal authorities for help. Two Ilyushin Il-76 brought equipment and personnel - about 130 people and 20 vehicles. TASS tells about a field medical town in the Murmansk Region.

Emergency Situations Ministry’s team

Before taking a turn to Belokamenka, we drive backwards and then take a side road. In about 300 meters we approach a cordon. Major General Ruslan Nazarov, chief of the local emergencies ministry’s branch, meets our group of reporters. He wears a mask. He has been on feet for a few days. With not much sleep. He welcomes us, adding he’ll answer any questions.

The ice-cold wind pushes us forward. We cross a signal-tape line and walk to the sanitary station. This is an obligatory procedure.

NBC Protection unit

Nuclear, biological and chemical units (NBC Protection) are organized both in the armed forces and in the emergency situations ministry’s divisions. Those units are called double-purpose troops, as they carry out both military and civil tasks. The emergency situations’ NBC Protection units first of all work to clean territories in cases of natural and industrial disasters.

The team has driven a KAMAZ truck from the emergency situations ministry’s Neva Center. They have brought equipment for disinfection of people and transport.

"There’s no passing us! No way," a hazmat emergency response specialist shouts through the gas mask.

The rescuers are busy, spraying every coming vehicle. At first, on one pad, which looks line a flat blow-up rubber pool, and then on another, "clean" pad. We cross the signal tape.

Away from curious eyes

Two zones - clean for the technical personnel, and contaminated for patients, who undergo COVID-19 tests and, if needed, who would be treated here.

The complex is a town of 25 blow-up tents to accommodate patients, four beds in each, and a similarly blow-up intensive care unit, as well as a canteen, showers, support facilities and a mobile disinfection station.

"Every tent is independent, it has a shower and toilet, a sink, ventilation, means of communication, and every patient, when needed, may address a doctor," the region’s chief rescuer Ruslan Nazarov said. "Individual heating comes from heat cannons. Every tent is maintained by a designated specialist."

This airmobile hospital in the polar region is organized next to Novatek’s construction site. The company is building in Belokamenka a center for construction of high-tonnage marine facilities to liquefy and load natural gas. In 2016, the Russian airmobile hospital was included into the Global Emergency Medical Team Registry of the World Health Organization.

The infection’s outbreak occurred at the site of the company’s contractor Velesstroy, where about 11,000 people work. The workers, taking shifts here, come from other regions and even countries. According to the Murmansk Region’s Governor Andrei Chibis, who came to the mobile hospital together with the reporters, the first infected patients were foreign citizens.

"Why was it important to have a modern, quickly deployable, mobile complex near Belokamenka?" the governor said. "We realize the hazard. At a safe distance from the city, without extra patients at the city hospitals, we here have all necessary equipment and specialists to diagnose patients, to monitor what happens and to distribute such patients depending on situations."

The Murmansk Region reports 403 infected, where 290 are here, in Belokamenka. The governor forecasts the peak is not here yet, and thus we understand, why on the road to this hospital we drove not to Belokamenka, but right in the opposite direction. Away from curious eyes. Reasonable isolation is reasonable also for the medics and for the rescuers.

"Flying" rescuers

Russia does not have the experience of fighting the coronavirus infection in field hospitals. The rescuers will have it soon. The mobile personnel at the hospital is 15 people: five doctors, five female nurses and five male nurses.

We feel freezing. Through blow-up doors we break into the intensive unit.

"Here we are at a unit where you’d rather not be," Igor Yakirevich, the mobile hospital’s chief doctor, said with a smile. He points to the equipment, and then in a very military-type mode reports the situation.

"We arrive, within two days we deploy the hospital. We have forces, specialists and we are in contact with the region’s authorities," he reported distinctly. "Here are the lung ventilation systems, all of them, ten. We have three intensive care teams, a sonographer, a surgeon, a radiologist and nurses."

The air temperature outdoors is minus one degree, but here, indoors, it is plus 30 degrees! The heat cannons receive electricity by a cable, laid here. The rescuers also have reserved electricity generators. This is extremely important in the "fields," when doctors have to fight for patients’ lives.

In the neighboring tent we meet radiologist Svetlana Isakova. She has been working at the rescue center for 20 years.

"We have big experience, beginning with Sri Lanka in 2005, there was a quake and then a tsunami, then we went to Pakistan after a quake in 2006, it was tough there, and also in 2005 we were in Indonesia. Then, in 2008, we went to China. 69,000 died there… My colleagues went to Syria. My family’s got used to it, though they worry about me, but anyway they understand it’s my job and this is what I do," she said.

As for the tent, she continued, she’s got used to working in a tent, and now it does not matter to her where to take images-at a hospital or in the field.

"We have just everything we may need. We have the equipment. Today, we’ve tested it, have screened ourselves. We have everything for disinfection, here is a couch, though patients usually stand when we take images of lungs. In the field conditions, a doctor does everything. It’s a matter of habit and practice," she added.

Presently, the mobile hospital can treat 100 patients at a time, but the number may be extend to additional 40 beds for critical patients.

Experience for scientific research

In the "clean" zone works a mobile group from the emergency ministry’s center in Noginsk (near Moscow). They are mostly engineers and technicians. They assure the town’s smooth work: they look after showers, the canteen, generators and so forth. A contractor company collects, packs and processes the waste.

"Very many issues are related to hygiene, waste processing, processing of the patients’ waste products," Ruslan Nazarov said. "The hospital has special means. We shall use a special company, which will specifically pack, collect, transport and then process those products."

Major-General Vladislav Gadeyev of the Emergency Situations Ministry joins us briefly. He came to Murmansk from Moscow.

"In February, the Ministry jointly with Rospotrebnadzor (consumer watchdog) organized exercises in fighting the coronavirus. This work in the field is unique. It will be our first experience of the kind. This experience could be good for a scientific publication later on," he said. "We realize the roadmap, where to move, what to equip, how to organize the work…"

The ministry has been in close contact with Rospotrebnadzor. Only after the mobile hospital passes an inspection, it will be ready to take first patients. Nobody can say for sure when this may happen.