Maduro notes aid provided to Venezuela by Russia, China, Cuba in tackling pandemic
Earlier Venezuela received two batches of testing systems for detecting the coronavirus from Russia
TASS, May 4. The aid provided by Russia and China has enabled Venezuela to conduct thousands of diagnostic tests amid the coronavirus pandemic, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said while addressing a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Contact Group Meeting in response to COVID-19 on Monday.
"We received the international aid provided by Cuba, which sent a huge group of experienced medical workers as reinforcement, I express gratitude to Cuba, as well as China and Russia for their logistics support. Without the logistics support provided by China and Russia, it would have been impossible to conduct thousands of diagnostic tests," he emphasized.
As of May 3, the authorities of the republic have conducted over 480,000 tests, according to President.
Earlier Venezuela received two batches of testing systems for detecting the coronavirus from Russia. Maduro thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for assistance during a telephone conversation.
The Venezuelan government informed about first two confirmed coronavirus cases in the country on March 13. On March 17, Maduro enforced a quarantine lockdown in the republic. As of May 3, 357 confirmed cases have been registered in the country, 10 people have died.
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 3.5 mln people have been infected worldwide and more than 240,000 deaths have been reported.