MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/. The 2020 Russian Freestyle Wrestling Championships, which was scheduled to be hosted by the Republic of Buryatia’s Ulan-Ude on April 22-27, has been postponed indefinitely over the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus, the press service of the Russian Wrestling Federation (RWF) announced in a statement on Thursday.

"The safety of people must be above everything and, therefore, we have decided to postpone the pre-Olympic Russian Freestyle Wrestling Championships," the statement quoted Arsen Fadzayev, the RWF first vice president, as saying.

COVID-19 Global Spread

On December 31, 2019, the Chinese authorities reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) about an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, an economic and industrial megalopolis with a population of 11 million.

The virus was identified on January 7 as 2019-nCoV. The World Health Organization declared in January that the new coronavirus outbreak was a public health emergency of international concern, characterizing it as an epidemic with multiple locations.

On February 11, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that the organization gave the novel coronavirus an official name of COVID-19. On March 11, the World Health Organization officially stated that the continuously spreading novel coronavirus was a global pandemic.

As of today, 176 countries and territories reported confirmed coronavirus cases. According to the latest reports, over 227,500 cases have been confirmed worldwide. The virus’ death toll has reached 9,303, yet more than 85,960 patients have recovered from the disease.

Russia has already confirmed over 140 cases of the novel coronavirus disease in the country.