WHO Official Says Expects To See Russia's COVID Measures To Make Impact

The World Health Organization (WHO) has seen the measures that Russia is taking to respond to the pandemic and expects them to make an impact, Dr. Catherine Smallwood, a senior emergencies officer of the WHO Regional Office for Europe, said Thursday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th October, 2020) The World Health Organization (WHO) has seen the measures that Russia is taking to respond to the pandemic and expects them to make an impact, Dr. Catherine Smallwood, a senior emergencies officer of the WHO Regional Office for Europe, said Thursday

The WHO official noted that since early October there had been a very significant increase in cases in Russia, concentrated in Moscow, greater Moscow area and St. Petersburg.

"We've seen measures being taken in those settings. We've seen designation of more hospital beds for COVID. We've seen preparations made at the health facility level. And we've also seen new measures being implemented in terms of asking people to work from home, taking advantage of school holidays to ask people to take individual measures and then more restrictions on the occurrence of gatherings in public places.

So we have seen impact on the health system, we've seen responses from the local authorities and we expect to see an impact on the epidemic due to that," Smallwood told a virtual press conference.

On Thursday, Russia reported 13,754 new infections, bringing the cumulative total to 1,354,163. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 23,491 people died, 1,048,097 recovered. Moscow recorded 3,942 new cases in 24 hours, after 4,573 cases a day earlier.