As is often the case with red authoritarian regimes where failures are often covered up and the voice of dissent silenced, Russia repeated its Chernobyl mistakes in the wake of Wuhan virus pandemic and now the price is being extracted in the form of frontline medical workers lives.
From 24 April to 2 May, three frontline health workers have mysteriously fallen out of hospital windows in Russia. A clear pattern has emerged prompting suspicions and discussion all around regarding decrepit working conditions of doctors amid the COVID-19 situation.
Two have already been buried by their colleagues; one is fighting for his life in intensive care with a fractured skull. In all three cases, there is evidence of serious conflict with hospital authorities over the coronavirus response in Russia.
Alexander Shulepov, the third victim is an ambulance doctor in Voronezh—he and his colleague Alexander Kosyakin had posted a video online on the same day Shulepov jumped off the second floor of the hospital saying, “he had been forced to continue working even after testing positive for coronavirus.”
Surprisingly, three days later, Shulepov retracted his previous statements–most certainly under duress from the Russian authorities. The government of Russia is so underprepared that official statistics regarding the medical personnel’s death have been missing or not even compiled yet.
Doctors themselves have taken the onus to compile a “memorial list” of colleagues who have died while treating the coronavirus patients nationwide. They have counted 113 so far which includes four medics from neighboring Belarus.
Even the medical students are being coerced to work in such dilapidated conditions. Speaking to a Russian daily, the students told that they face academic repercussions if they reject the government order to work in coronavirus hospitals. Even the salaries given are drastically lower than what was promised.
Citing low wages and poor working conditions, nurses have quit en masse from Kommunarka–Moscow’s top coronavirus hospital.
Russia seems to be helpless in the face of rising infections as only last week Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin also tested positive for the novel Coronavirus. President Vladimir Putin has warned that the country has yet to reach the peak of its outbreak.
After underreporting cases for the large part of the pandemic, infection cases in Russia have shot through the roof in recent weeks.
There have been 187,859 cases of coronavirus infections reported in Russia so far and 1,723 deaths. Russia confirmed 11,231 new coronavirus infections on Thursday making a new one-day record rise in infections.
By the end of March, Russia had been claiming as few as 1,264 confirmed cases, a number that was particularly lower than some of the worst affected parts in the world at the time- Iran, Italy, parts of Europe and also the United States.
But the sudden spurt in numbers has given weight to the theory that Russia had been hiding the numbers for the large part of the first three months of 2020.
The strain such humongous number of cases has put on Russia’s healthcare system is evident from the fact that medical personnel have been having a hard fending the virus while treating the patients in the absence of PPE’s and other protective equipment.
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The plight of doctors in Russia is reminiscent of the doctors in China. Dr. Ai Fen, one of the first whistle-blowers to speak up and expose CCP’s cover-up has been missing since she gave an interview to the Chinese magazine, Renwu (or people) in April.
In the interview she had disclosed how she had found several patients with flu-like symptoms in December last year who were not responding to the usual treatment methods. She later also received a lab report about one of the patients which contained the words “SARS coronavirus”.
After Dr. Fen, other doctors like Dr. Li Wenliang also started questioning the Xi Jinping regime about the virus. Unfortunately his voice was muzzled by the Communist regime too and he later succumbed to the novel Wuhan virus infection.
We translated the warning letter Chinese doctor Li Wenliang got from the police for telling others about the coronavirus outbreak before it killed hundreds, including himself https://t.co/G5SiIXmTOL pic.twitter.com/MCsYqZ196P
— Alan Wong (@alanwongw) February 7, 2020
The world is suddenly realizing that Russia is hit far more severely by the novel virus than any scientific model could have predicted. Both St. Petersburg and Moscow are under lockdown, even as the authorities grapple to contain the pandemic.
If Putin does not get a grip on the situation, the numbers in Russia could rise even more exponentially and doctors will be put under tremendous strain. And losing doctors and nurses is something the Russian authorities cannot afford at this point when humanity is facing one of the greatest challenges of its history.
