Post by Oleg Smirnov<http://archive.is/ObjiI> reuters.com
.. Body count mounts, medical supplies dwindle ..
And you still believe what the Kremlin says?
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Russia Says It Has Very Few Coronavirus Cases. The Numbers Don’t Tell the
Full Story.
Experts say Russia’s testing procedures have been hampered by bureaucracy.
By Evan Gershkovich and Pjotr Sauer
March 18, 2020
With 116,000 tests for the coronavirus carried out and 114 returning
positive, Russia’s ratio of tests to positive cases is the lowest among all
of the countries infected by the coronavirus.
Russia’s official statistics indicate that the country has virtually no
coronavirus within its borders.
With 116,000 tests for the coronavirus carried out and 114 returning
positive, Russia’s ratio of tests to positive cases is 0.09%, the lowest
among all of the countries infected by the coronavirus. The second lowest
ratio is Taiwan’s 0.3% — three times higher than Russia’s.
Not even the Russian authorities, however, trust those numbers.
“The figures are likely a lot higher,” Alexei Kurinny, a deputy on the State
Duma’s health protection committee, told The Moscow Times. “Unfortunately we
were slow to get around to doing comprehensive testing.”
The new coronavirus pandemic has brought a host of countries to a near halt
in recent days and killed nearly 8,000 people around the world.
On Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin judged the situation in Russia “under
control.” But the country has nonetheless revved into gear over the past few
days, announcing that it will ban the entry of foreign nationals and
stateless people until May 1 in an effort to slow down the spread of the
coronavirus. Meanwhile, Moscow has banned all public events larger than 50
people until April 10.
But despite these measures, medical experts are now questioning whether
Russia’s official coronavirus statistics reflect reality in the country —
which ranked 116th last year in the Global Health Security Index for
“detecting” pandemics.
If the numbers are significantly higher, officials may have missed their
opportunity to stem the tide — leaving the weight on the shoulders of
doctors already stretched thin by a teetering healthcare system.
A month after the coronavirus outbreak began in neighboring China, a state
virology and biotechnology center in a Siberian town announced that it had
developed test kits for the new virus.
For the nearly two months since, Vektor, which is based outside the city of
Novosibirsk some 3,380 kilometers east of Russia’s most populous city of
Moscow, has been the only lab in the country that can officially determine
whether a test was positive.
The procedure is as follows: Doctors do a test and send it to a local center
for a preliminary test, which then sends it onward to Siberia for
confirmation.
“We are going to have a center like this in Moscow soon so we don’t have to
send the tests so far away,” said Kurinny, the State Duma deputy, noting
that he expected Moscow officials to announce the new testing lab at any
moment.
Litany of Blunders: Treatment of Coronavirus Patient Highlights Russia’s
Shortcomings
As a result of the testing procedure, only the state health watchdog
Rospotrepnadzor, which oversees Vektor, can determine how accurate the tests
have been. Rospotrepnazdor declined multiple requests for comment for this
article.
But at least one concern has been raised by medical experts in recent days
over the fact that the test, which detects the virus by replicating DNA
using a primer that fits coronavirus DNA, is not sensitive enough to
accurately register positive tests. According to the Moscow-based PCR News
website, which reports on medicine, Vektor’s kit uses a cycle total of 10 to
the fifth power per millimeter to register a positive test.
“This is low by modern standards,” PCR News wrote Friday. “If a patient is
clearly infected but the concentration of the virus is lower than 10 to the
fifth power, the test result will be negative.”
In this case, the outlet continued, doctors might decide that the patient is
healthy and cannot infect others. “But now they are walking on the street
while still infected.”
Gaetan Burgio, a geneticist specializing in infectious diseases at the
Australian National University, echoed PCR News’s assessment.
“Testing 10 to the fifth power per millimeter seems low,” he said. “With
such a large sample size, you would expect the percentage of those confirmed
sick to be higher.”
“Unfortunately we were slow to get around to doing comprehensive testing," a
lawmaker said.AP / TASS
Although Vektor is the only lab that can make official calls on coronavirus
tests, it’s not the only one to have developed tests in Russia.
PCR News reported that several other state-run labs have tests ready to go —
but that they are waiting to be put to use.
And earlier this month the Kommersant business daily reported that two
commercial labs had produced tests but were looking to sell them to other
countries as they couldn’t do so at home.
“The problem is incomprehensible bureaucratic barriers,” said Vladimir
Kolin, who runs the Moscow-based firm DNK Tekhnologiya — or DNA Technology —
which produced one of the tests.
He noted that the lab’s test has a sensitivity of 10 to the third power —
which, if true, means it could detect more positive results than Vektor’s
test.
There is also the question of sheer quantity.
Anastasiya Vasiliyeva, head of the Doctor’s Alliance trade union set-up by
Russia’s most prominent opposition critic Alexei Navalny, told The Moscow
Times that in recent weeks doctors have been reporting to the union that
many tests have been coming back late. Some said that they never saw the
results at all.
“How can one lab handle all this work?” Vasiliyeva said.
Limited sample size
Along with the Vektor test’s potential flaws, Russia’s testing procedures
might also explain its low ratio of tests to positive cases.
As lessons are being learned on the fly from countries like China and South
Korea, which three months into the pandemic have begun limiting the spread
of the coronavirus by conducting thousands of tests a day, the WHO is
recommending “rapid testing of any suspect case” and “immediate isolation.”
“Those were the measures that stopped transmission in China, not the big
travel restrictions and lockdowns,” the organization’s assistant director
general Bruce Aylward told the New Scientist on Monday.
As of Wednesday, Russia is reportedly now opening up test development to
other companies in addition to Vektor.
But medical experts have also raised concerns over Russia's testing size
sample — which has included only those people who are exhibiting symptoms
and who have entered the country within 14 days of visiting a country on
Russia’s black list, such as Iran and Italy.
On Tuesday, Kurinny, pointing to lessons from China and South Korea,
admitted that this policy was a mistake.
Even those who know Vektor well have their doubts.
“I cannot find any explanation [for the fact that a low number of people
have been diagnosed with the virus in Russia] and that is why doubts gnaw at
me,” Alexander Chepurnov, a virologist who previously headed research into
ebola at Vektor, told The Siberian Times last weekend. “What is worrying, in
my opinion, is that I do not understand why they do not take samples from
all people with pneumonia.”
How Russia Is Responding to the Coronavirus: Cameras, Deportations and
Skepticism
Later Tuesday afternoon, Rospotrepnadzor announced that it now would be
testing anybody who has returned from Europe — with or without symptoms —
over the past two weeks.
But when The Moscow Times reached Rospotrepnadzor’s hotline on Wednesday
morning, multiple operators said that they had not heard of any new
guidelines.
Now, there are worries about how hospitals will be able to handle all the
incoming patients. On Tuesday, the Meduza news outlet reported that
hospitals in St. Petersburg had reached capacity, while Moscow’s Mayor
Sergei Sobyanin told Putin that the city is set to build a new hospital
within a month designated for coronavirus patients.
As for Russia’s western exclave of Kaliningrad, where five people have so
far tested positive for the coronavirus, the region’s governor Anton
Alikhanov told The Moscow Times that his administration will be renting a
hotel to accomodate the 200 people currently identified as needing
quarantine.
“The situation is tense but manageable,” Alikhanov said.
Special perks
If Russia isn’t testing correctly at home, that’s not stopping it from
trying to gain a foothold on the world stage.
Last week, Russia announced that it had sent hundreds of tests to countries
including Iran, North Korea and a host of post-Soviet states.
During a video press conference Tuesday evening, the WHO’s European Region
Health Emergencies Coordinator Dorit Nitzan rated Russia’s testing capacity
highly.
“We are working together hand-in-hand,” Nitzan told The Moscow Times. “We
are using their tests as well.”
Russian Prisoners, Students and Military Will Be Commandeered to Produce
Masks
In addition to foreign countries, Russia is also taking care of its uber
rich.
On Sunday night, the daughters of Russian real estate tycoon Alexander
Chigirinsky — Maria, 23, and Irina, 19 — returned to Moscow from a ski
holiday in the luxury Alps resort of Courchevel in France, a coronavirus
hotspot.
Although neither sister exhibited symptoms of the virus, Maria told The
Moscow Times that they were given an “express test” as soon as they
disembarked from their private jet at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport.
In a video published by the Mash Telegram channel Sunday evening, workers in
white protective suits stand at the base of the plane’s exit ramp holding
what resemble tool boxes.
Less than 48 hours later, the sisters received their negative test results.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/18/russia-says-it-has-very-few-coronavirus-cases-the-numbers-dont-tell-the-full-story-a69661
