Two Russian medical staff die as cases soar
THIRD IN CRITICAL CONDITION, ALL 3 FELL FROM HOSPITAL WINDOWS
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 480 kilometres 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 that 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 centre outside Moscow, fell to her death from a window at the hospital where she was being treated for suspected COVID- 19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The next day, Yelena Nepomnyashchaya, the head of a hospital in Krasnoyarsk, a city 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 allegedly 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 seven per cent 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. Because the hospital didn’t supply her with a respirator mask, she said, she wore a welding shield that her husband purchased.
Zamyatina said that of the 15- person cardiology staff reassigned to work with coronavirus patients, five became infected.
Russia has recorded more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases in each of the past few days, with the number jumping by 11,231 in the last 24 hours. The country’s total number of cases eclipsed 177,000 on Thursday.
More than half of all cases and deaths are in Moscow, the epicentre of Russia’s outbreak, which on Thursday reported a record overnight increase of 6,703 new cases.
Russia’s official death toll, which remains far lower than in many countries, rose to 1,625 after 88 people died overnight, the country’s coronavirus taskforce said.
Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said Wednesday confirmed cases were rising in the capital because authorities had sharply increased testing and that the situation had actually somewhat stabilized. Russia says it has carried out more than 4.8 million coronavirus tests.
But on Thursday, Moscow officials said tests used throughout the countr y often give the wrong result.
And Sobyanin said the real number of coronavirus infections was more than triple the official figure.
State medical institutions mainly use tests produced by the government- owned Vektor Institute in Siberia. They are based on a so-called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, which quickly makes copies of a small sample of DNA molecules, the genetic blueprint for life.
At late stages of the illness, the PCR tests often give false negative results, Moscow’s health department said in its statement.
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.
Two days before Kosyakin recorded the video with Shulepov, Kosyakin authored a social media post in which he complained about a shortage of personal protective equipment at the Novousmanskaya hospital, where he worked. The post was later removed without his knowledge, he said, and he was informed by authorities that he faces charges for spreading “fake news” about the virus. The Voronezh region health department denied Kosyakin’s claims.
“Lots of my colleagues said I’m like a revolutionary or a rebel, but I’m not,” Kosyakin said. “I’m just telling the truth.”
Earlier this week, Putin backed a plan put forward by Moscow’s Sobyanin to gradually begin lifting some lockdown restrictions after May 12, following six weeks of restrictions.
The capital’s residents have been told to stay at home except in certain circumstances such as going out to buy food and medicine. They must obtain a digital permit to travel anywhere by public or private transport.
Russia’s relatively low death rate has prompted some Kremlin critics to suggest the authorities may be covering up the real toll of the outbreak by failing to correctly identify coronavirus deaths as such.
First- person accounts of health- care workers’ concerns have been popping up with increasing frequency, as have reports of doctors quitting. The chief physician of Omsk’s city hospital, Georgy Sobolev, resigned Tuesday “because he failed to keep his staff away from the virus or take the necessary epidemiological security measures,” the region’s health minister, Irina Soldatova, said in a statement. Sixteen of the hospital’s staff have contracted the coronavirus.
Lyubimaya, who works for the medical outsourcing company Arni, said Moscow’s Kommunarka hospital forced junior medical staff like her to wear used protective gear. Because she is not employed by the hospital itself, she said, she was never tested for the virus or provided accommodations, so she travelled to and from work on public transportation each day and risked unknowingly bringing the virus home.
“I have five children,” Lyubimaya said. “It’s one thing to risk my own life, but I don’t want to risk the lives of my family and my children.”