MOSCOW, April 27. /TASS/. /TASS/. Two more weeks of the anti-coronavirus lockdown will help reverse the situation, Alexander Semyonov, deputy director of St. Petersburg’s research institute of epidemiology and microbiology of Russia’s Federal Consumer Rights Oversight Service, said on Monday.

"If we stand these two weeks, if we continue to observe this social distancing, despite the negative emotions provoked by the self-isolation regime, we will have a chance to see a reverse tendency already by mid-May," he said in an interview with the Pozner program on TV Channel One.

He warned however that if a lot people violate the lockdown regime now, "we may not reach a plateau in June." He stressed that the lockdown measures are an objective necessity. "This is a part of responsibility each one of us must undertake," he stressed.

He explained why Russia has outstripped China in terms of the number of confirmed coronavirus cases. Thus, in his words, it happened because restrictions in Russia are much milder than in China where capital punishment is practiced for some serious crimes in some provinces. "I don’t mean to suggest such measures. Most of our people understand the necessity of the [lockdown] measures," he said.

Another factor, in his words, is that Russia conducts more tests than China. "We have launched production of testing systems, have set up laboratories. We are conducting more tests than China did. It is highly likely that they had more cases. After all, at least half of people develop either no or minor symptoms," he added.

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 3,000,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 207,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 882,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

To date, a total of 87,147 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 7,346 patients having recovered from the virus. Russia’s latest data indicates 794 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.