MOSCOW, April 9. /TASS/. Russia will prepare nearly 95,000 hospital beds by late April, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said in an interview with the Vesti program on the Rossiya-1 TV channel.
"We have reequipped some beds. By the end of the month, nearly 95,000 hospital beds in total should be ready in the country, taking into account the reequipped hospital beds that had been used for other types of medical aid earlier," Murashko said.
"The healthcare system is working under stress conditions," the minister added.
In his words, the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) can be diagnozed by the overall clinical picture before the results of the lab tests come in.
"We see that the disease often develops very fast, it has a corresponding clinical picture. So a diagnosis can be made without lab confirmation, based on the clinical picture. This is normal practice for doctors," he said in an interview with the Vesti program on the Rossiya-1 TV channel.
Children very rarely have severe symptoms of the disease caused by coronavirus, Murashko said.
"We can see that children is getting ill [with the disease caused by coronavirus] in a severe manner very rarely. Indeed, the older generation, the ones over 60-65 years old, get severe symptoms," he said. "Especially patients with serious physical conditions, such as cardiovascular diseases, coronary heart disease, respiratory illnesses, bronchial asthma, diabetes. Obese patients develop very severe symptoms," he said.
COVID-19 treatment
The minister said the anti-malaria drug used to treat the novel coronavirus cannot be taken without medical supervision, as it has many side effects.
"We are using drugs that are being used to treat malaria and other diseases. This drug <…> is actively used in hospitals [to treat COVID-19], however, it has various side effects, so you cannot take it on your own under any circumstances. This is simply dangerous," he said.
Murashko explained that other countries had reported cases of people using this drug at home without prescription or medical supervision, which ended badly. He added that various drugs used to treat HIV-positive people are also being employed against COVID-19.
Pandemic
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 1,500,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 88,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far over 331,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.
To date, a total of 10,131 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 698 patients having recovered from the virus. Moscow accounts for the majority of cases (6,698). Russia’s latest data indicates 76 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.