Moscow is heading for a similar level of coronavirus infection as New York, a leading Russian virologist has warned.
Professor Sergei Netesov says Moscow is facing a major crisis with hospitals already in emergency mode and the health service stretched to the limit.
Moscow’s usually crowded streets and busy 12million population make it an ideal breeding ground for the epidemic in the same way as New York, the professor said, warning that lockdown measures may have come too late.
The alarming prediction comes as Russia builds 18 new coronavirus hospitals from the Baltic to the Pacific, while footage emerged of a child screaming and scared as he was sealed inside a stretcher in Krasnodar.
Meanwhile, China urged Moscow to ‘get a grip’ on infections because most of its new cases have been imported from Russia.
A coronavirus hospital under construction in Moscow, which accounts for more than half of Russia’s cases, prompting warnings that the city faces a similar crisis to New York
Professor Netesov, of Novosibirk State University and the former head of the Vector laboratory which is at the forefront of Russian testing and efforts to find a vaccine, warned the capital would end up with ‘the same picture’ as New York.
‘New York streets are crowded, especially in Manhattan, the same as we have within the Garden Ring in Moscow,’ the professor said.
‘People communicate actively, they are used to eating out two or three times a day.
‘There is a lot of conditions for the disease to spread – that’s why we have such an outbreak.
‘We will have the same picture [as New York], especially in Moscow. ‘I very much suspect this although I don’t want it.’
Moscow currently has 13,002 registered cases, some 61.6 per cent of the Russian total of 21,102. New York state has 203,348 cases and 10,842 deaths.
The professor told Reminder Media: ‘Russia is at the beginning stage of the epidemic. We practically got 80 per cent of new cases in a matter of one week.
‘The death rate is calculated based on those who got infected two, three, or four weeks ago.
‘Our numbers are not displaying the real picture yet.
‘We are only seeing the top of the iceberg because we don’t know how many asymptomatic cases we have.’
The hospital under construction in Moscow, which has already confirmed more than 13,000 cases of coronavirus
New York: Medical personnel move the body of a dead patient to a refrigerated truck at Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York
Professor Sergei Netesov (pictured) says Moscow is facing a major crisis with hospitals already in emergency mode and the health service stretched to the limit
The professor suggested that up to 80 per cent of infected patients could be asymptomatic carriers who ‘don’t feel sick and don’t even go to the doctor’.
‘These carriers walk around in the streets, go to office and very likely spread the infection for one to three weeks,’ he said.
‘To say that mass testing should not be conducted means to simply ignore asymptomatic carriers,’ the professor said.
‘Leading US experts, such as [infectious diseases chief] Anthony Fauci immediately said that all contacts of the infected should be checked.
‘But in the beginning President Trump and even some medics rejected the need of mass testing.
‘And only when one asymptomatic carrier infected almost 200 people in Washington state did they start contemplating it.’
Moscow entered lockdown at the end of March, requiring people to show e-passes to prove they are allowed to travel.
However, footage showed long queues in a Moscow metro station with many people not wearing masks or practising social distancing.
Volgograd: Another of the army-built hospitals is seen under construction in Volgograd, the city formerly known as Stalingrad
Murmansk: One of the new field hospitals is in the Arctic, where there has been a virus outbreak among migrant workers at a natural gas plant in Murmansk
Russia is building a series of new emergency clinics but it is feared they will not be enough to cope with the swelling numbers of patients.
Health minister Mikhail Murashko has now ordered all Russian hospitals to be ready to set up coronavirus wards.
Pictures show work in progress on army-built hospitals from Kaliningrad in eastern Europe to Kamchatka in on the Pacific coast.
Meanwhile, China today revealed that 79 coronavirus patients who entered from Russia at the Suifenhe frontier post had all recently flown from Moscow to Vladivostok.
The Chinese nationals had not been detected by medics as contagious before making the eight and a half hour flight or on arrival in Vladivostok.
Russia has only registered 32 infections in the entire Primorsky region – larger than England – of which Vladivostok is the main city.
China Daily, owned by the Communist Party, said its country’s focus on countering the pandemic was now on border towns like Suifenhe and Manzhouli, where the frontier has been shut.
In a pointed remark – aimed at Russia – the newspaper said: ‘There needs to be stronger coordination and cooperation with neighbouring countries so they can get a grip on the spread of the virus.’
Kamchatka: This picture shows the construction work at a coronavirus hospital in Russia’s far east in the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
Kaliningrad: Another coronavirus hospital is under construction in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordering Poland on the Baltic Sea
Trucks are moved into the back of an aircraft in Murmansk, as the Russian army battles against the coronavirus outbreak
Elsewhere, one of Russia’s new clinics has been built in the Arctic to counter an outbreak among migrant workers at a liquid natural gas construction site near Murmansk.
Infections have doubled to reach more than 200 at the Belokamenka site, and a total of 268 in the region where three out of four victims are aged under 45.
Two huge Ilyushin-76 transport planes flew to Murmansk to set up the military-style clinic.
The largest new hospital with initially 500 beds rising to 656 is outside Moscow and has been built in a little over one month.
Almost half the beds in the new Moscow clinic will be intensive care.
The city’s existing Kommunarka infectious diseases hospital is reported to be packed with ‘elite’ patients suffering from coronavirus or its symptoms.
Health minister Murashko said that all hospitals may need to take coronavirus patients despite the massive efforts to build new capacity.
He said: ‘I’m very concerned by the state of the outpatient-polyclinic service.
‘I would say that we have been training it practically on a daily basis, because it needs to be readjusted. This indeed is a special situation.’