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Coronavirus pandemic

First death from COVID-19 documented in Belarus

According to Belarusian media, the deceased man was 75 years old and lived in Vitebsk in the northeast of the country

© AP Photo/Sergei Grits

MINSK, March 31. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has informed of the first death from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country during a meeting with the country’s top senator Natalya Kochanova, BelTA news agency reports.

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"The wife is healthy, she was living together with the husband, the daughter is healthy. Because they have a strong immune system. But he, poor guy, didn't make it. He was hospitalized with a bad case of pneumonia, his lungs were artificially ventilated, medics worked hard to save him," he said, quoted by BelTA.

According to Belarusian media, the deceased man was 75 years old and lived in Vitebsk in the northeast of the country. Lukashenko noted that the health minister had been sent to the city. "I am not saying there is some catastrophe with the coronavirus [in the Vitebsk Region]. The Vitebsk Region has a different climate and the morbidity peak has shifted a bit. Yes, some errors were made. I would like to hear about them. The healthcare minister is working there today. I've sent him and specialists there. I want them to pay attention, analyze things and make conclusions," he added.

Lukashenko stressed that it is especially important to take care of the elderly in this situation. "Not because they are old but because their immune systems are weak. And secondly they have a bunch of illnesses," he noted.

At the same time, he called on Belarusian doctors not to forget about other patients in need of medical aid. "Diseases other than viruses kill hundreds of times more people. We just focus on the coronavirus epidemic. We have patients that suffer from oncological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and asthma. We also have people that suffer from pneumonia without any complications. And the number of deaths caused by these diseases is hundreds of times higher than the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus," the Belarusian president stressed.

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In late December 2019, Chinese authorities 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 WHO, have been reported in more than 160 countries, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. To date, more than 786,600 people have been infected worldwide and over 37,800 have died, while more than 165,800 have recovered.

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