President Vladimir Putin said that Russia may need the army’s help to build field hospitals for Covid-19 patients as Russia battles a surge in infections that has led to a nationwide workplace shutdown.
“The situation in the country is very difficult,” Putin said in remarks on Monday to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and other top brass. “More than 40,000 cases (a day). This has never happened.
“I ask you to … continue to provide support to the civil medical service if needed. Maybe use your construction abilities because there is a need to keep building prefabricated medical facilities.”
President Vladimir Putin was forced to intervene personally on Monday in the epidemic sweeping Russia’s North Caucasus region of Dagestan, as local officials described the coronavirus situation as a “catastrophe.”
For several days now, there have rumours of mounting fatalities and overwhelmed hospitals in the mountainous majority-Muslim region and local medical staff have taken to social media to make frantic appeals.
Dagestan’s top cleric, Mufti Akhmad Abdulayev, described the situation as dire and pleaded to the Kremlin for help.
“The scope of the catastrophe is forcing us to appeal to you,” he told Putin via video link Monday. “Please, bring your attention to Dagestan.”
