MINSK, 22 October (BelTA) – At the meeting with senior officials of the Council of Ministers on 22 October Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko commented on the reaction of people in other countries to his recent statement about the impact of COVID on cancer, BelTA has learned.
The head of state noted that at the recent meeting to discuss the epidemiological situation in the country, healthcare experts drew attention to one unusual fact: COVID-19 ‘suppressed' the flu, in other words, very few flu cases are reported in the country so far.
“But what happened to cancer? We have been living with the pandemic for three years, two years for sure, and there has been a sharp drop in cancer cases and cancer deaths. Scientists have noticed this,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
According to him, at first doctors thought that people having cancer were less likely to seek help due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. “But when this decline continued throughout the second year, scientists assumed that COVID had an impact on the course of cancer. Scientists from our cancer center noticed it too and began to whisper their observations to each other,” the president explained. The head of state said that he decided to learn more about this situation.
Doctors of the Alexandrov National Cancer Center in Borovlyany confirmed this assumption in a conversation with Aleksandr Lukashenko when he was visiting this medical facility. “I said we would rather treat COVID than cancer. I hope to God that it will be so,” he said.
After that, the president shared these assumptions with employees of Minsk Oblast Hospital. His words made headlines and were broadly discussed by the public and by the media.
“My God, people from Belarus to America gave this statement of the president a tongue-lashing. But I'm not saying that COVID treats cancer. These are the facts. I wish it were so – that was what I said. And now everyone is finding fault with it … Okay, we can forget about Americans, Europeans, but in Russia there are so many smart alecs saying “oh, the president is not an expert, he says that COVID treats cancer”. But I am not saying it. They are finding fault with everything,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
“This suggests that they respond to every this and that happening in Belarus. That is, Belarus is a pain in the neck for them. And in this situation, we will not only need to survive. We need to find a way to stand our ground and retain our state,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
