2 Russian health workers mysteriously dead; third hurt
MOSCOW — The two Russian paramedics were dressed for work in the video, masks covering their noses and mouths as they delivered a grim dispatch.
The narrator identified himself as Alexander Kosyakin and his colleague as Alexander Shulepov. Shulepov had just learned that he tested positive for the coronavirus, Kosyakin said, yet “the head doctor forces us to continue working, and what can we do in the situation?”
“We haven’t been released from our shift,” Shulepov said. Both work in Voronezh, a city about 300 miles south of Moscow.
In a second video released days later by the press secretary of the regional health department, Shulepov backed off those comments, saying he had been “emotional” and that his boss did eventually tell him to stop working.
Shulepov was admitted to the hospital, and it was there on May 1 that he fell from a second-floor window in what local authorities have called an accident.
Shulepov, who is in critical condition with a skull fracture, is the third Russian medical professional in two weeks to mysteriously fall from a hospital window. The other two died.
A week before Shulepov’s fall, Natalya Lebedeva, who ran an ambulance station at a cosmonaut training center outside Moscow, fell to her death from a window at the hospital where she was being treated for suspected COVID-19.
The next day, Yelena Nepomnyashchaya, the head of a hospital in Krasnoyarsk, in western Siberia, fell from the window of her fifthfloor office, reportedly right after she had a conference call with regional health officials.
Nepomnyashchaya was said to be opposed to converting a ward in the hospital to house coronavirus patients because of a shortage of trained personnel and protective equipment, according to a local media report that cited anonymous sources.
Krasnoyarsk health officials denied that the conference call took place.
The incidents have highlighted escalating tensions in a Russian health care system under pressure from a surge of coronavirus cases and a shortage of medical professionals.
With doctors, nurses and medics reportedly accounting for roughly 7 percent of the country’s official coronavirus fatalities, the medical community has increasingly taken to social media to voice frustrations about poor working conditions and the continued absence of stipends promised by President Vladimir Putin.
Some, like Marianna Zamyatina, a cardiologist in St. Petersburg, and Natalya Lyubimaya, a junior medic who worked at Moscow’s main coronavirus hospital, have quit their jobs.
“If I hadn’t quit, I would’ve been infected in a couple of days,” Zamyatina said, adding that her complaints to hospital administration about insufficient personal protective equipment resulted in a demotion.
Russia has recorded more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases in each of the past three days; the country’s confirmed total has eclipsed 165,000, with more than 1,500 deaths.
There is no official data on how many health-care professionals have died of the coronavirus, so doctors anonymously created an online “memory list” to keep a count of their fallen colleagues. As of Wednesday, it had 108 names.