Doctor Natallia Laryjonava: Belarus Must Introduce Same Measures As Italy

A doctor from Vitebsk commented on the situation with the coronavirus in the city, and in the whole country.

Natallia Laryjonava, a laboratory diagnostics doctor at the Vitsebsk emergency care hospital, distributed a message on social networks that assesses the situation in Vitsebsk as getting out of control, and calls the figures reported to the WHO by Belarus a myth.

“My dear friends! Help the people of Belarus be saved! I am a doctor, I work in Vitsebsk in an emergency care hospital. In our city, the situation began to get out of hand! Doctors will soon be unable to cope with the influx of patients. Many doctors are in hospitals with pneumonia! Share this information on social networks. The figures, those that are submitted to the WHO, are absolutely mythical,” the doctor posted such message on March 30 on her page in the Vkontakte social network. The appeal of Hrodna doctor Aliaksandr Loban comes next.

Now this publication has already gained more than 2200 likes and 455 reposts. Narodnyja Naviny managed to contact Natallia, and talk about her vision of the situation with the COVID-19 epidemic in Vitsebsk, and Belarus.

- Natallia, what was the reason you posted this message in social networks?

- I did it because of the fear for my colleagues and residents of our country. Recently, resuscitation doctors began to drop out ... I am not aware of the middle medical staff, but there, probably, things are even sadder.

- Today, Aliaksandr Lukashenka has voiced the information that 10 doctors were infected after contacting patients in Vitsebsk, how do you assess it?

- I can’t say the exact number and evaluate this. But I know that the doctors of the diagnostic center who were in contact with a businessman infected abroad became the first to fall ill. Now resuscitators are getting sick. If it goes on like this, I think we will drown.

- And how do you assess the current situation?

- And how can you assess it? When all the doctors get sick, who will treat the people?

- There are rumors circulating in the city that they allegedly evacuated patients from the emergency care hospital to the regional hospital. How true is this?

- This is not entirely true, there was no evacuation to other hospitals. Just at the end of the week all of the patients were suddenly transferred from a separate therapeutic building to other hospital buildings. Thus, they freed one of the buildings of the emergency care hospital, but they don’t place the infected there. Moreover, this is probably not possible - because next to it is a maternity hospital, and the hospital canteen.

- What do you think the authorities should do to take control of the epidemic?

- There is only one answer - quarantine. In my opinion, in Vitsebsk and in Belarus as a whole, the same restriction measures should be introduced as Italy has now applied. Only in this way, in my opinion, can we escape the terrifying picture that is now observed in this country.

- Until the authorities introduce such measures, what can we do personally?

- What can I do? I'm doing my job. I wear a mask all the time. I constantly disinfect my hands. I talk about the danger of the coronavirus, wherever I can.

Natallia Laryjonava graduated from the full-time department of the therapeutic faculty of Vitsebsk State Medical University in 1995. Judging by the entry in the work book, she has been working in the emergency care hospital for 18 years.