MOSCOW, December 28. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) has managed to prevent the emergence of particularly dangerous infections nationwide this year, Anna Popova, who heads the agency, said on Wednesday.
"This year we did not allow any particularly dangerous infections to enter the country, though there are many risks circulating, [such as] smallpox, <...> cholera, which has spread around the world this year. In many countries, the morbidity and mortality figures were high, but we have done everything necessary. We took measures, issued the necessary documents and implemented them back in spring, and thus, this very unpleasant, terrible, and very likely disease did not bother us this year," she told the Rossiya-24 TV channel in an interview.
Popova also recalled the plague, which was a focal disease. "In different countries and the near abroad of the Russian Federation [the plague] also appeared. But we did everything earlier in the spring, and in the summer our colleagues from the plague control system worked to prevent any complications, and we didn't allow them to break out," she noted.
According to the agency head, monkeypox was a new and unusual challenge, but the measures taken by the federal service made it possible to "close the borders to infections without closing the borders to people." "As it was in the summer, so it is today, we have only two cases of registered monkeypox, and no more," Popova emphasized.