MOSCOW, May 27. /TASS/. Moscow authorities are prepared for lifting restrictions imposed in the city over the coronavirus spread, Moscow’s chief sanitary doctor Elena Andreyeva said on Wednesday.
"If we look at these three figures, we are ready for the first stage and in general, in principle, we are even ready for the second one," Andreyeva, who heads the Moscow department of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, told an online meeting of the Moscow City Duma.
To date, there are three indicators allowing the city to end the lockdown in three stages outlined by the Russian sanitary watchdog. All decisions are very balanced and are taken depending on the overall epidemiological situation in Moscow.
One of these indicators is the rate of the coronavirus spread, which should be below 1 for at least 70 days. The average rate in Moscow is 0.85. The two other indicators are the volume of free beds at hospitals and the level of tests carried out among citizens, according to Andreyeva.
Amid the lockdown, all Moscow authorities conduct meetings in an online mode because the situation in the city is the most challenging among all regions.
According to the official, international experience shows that there are four phases: the first is when a virus is still not registered in the country, the second is when the first cases are recorded, during the third phase the cases are imported and then there is a large-scale spread of the infection. "We have not reached the fourth phase and we are not going to do this because today the situation is fully under control," she stressed.
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 5,701,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 352,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 2,445,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.
To date, a total of 370,680 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 142,208 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 3,968 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.