MOSCOW, April 14. /TASS/. The results of the two-week self-isolation will show up by the end of the current week or at the beginning of the next one, as the coronavirus incubation period is 14 days, Anna Popova, chief of Russia’s sanitary watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said on Tuesday.
"Evidently, we will see the results this week, at the end of it or at the beginning of the next week. It is important," she said in an interview with Russia’s television Channel One.
According to Popova, the authorities are already working on various recommendations and guidelines for businesses and organizations on how to organize their work after the self-isolation regime is lifted. "But today it is necessary to stay at home, to avoid contacts so that it could be possible to return to normal life," she stressed.
Nearly a third of coronavirus carriers in Russia demonstrate no evident symptoms, Popova said.
"The more we examine healthy population the more asymptomatic people we find. Nearly 30% of those infected are people showing no symptoms," she said in an interview with Russia’s television Channel One.
According to Popova, the share of such patients is changing with time. "Whereas there were around ten percent of asymptomatic patients in early March, now in a number of regions, for instance in the Moscow region, the share of people with no symptoms is 52% These people would have never known that they are virus carriers but for testing," she noted.
That is why, in her words, the only right thing now is to stay at home and undergo testing.
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 1,900,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 119,000 deaths have been reported.
To date, a total of 21,102 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 1,694 patients having recovered from the virus. Russia’s latest data indicates 170 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.