01 July 2020, 15:34

Ambassador explains difference in response to COVID-19 in Belarus and Russia

MOSCOW, 1 July (BelTA) – The differences in approaches to tackling COVID-19 in Belarus and Russia are explained by Russia's high financial capacity, Ambassador of Belarus to Russia Vladimir Semashko said as he took part in an online briefing held on 1 July in the run-up to Belarus' Independence Day, BelTA has learned.

Belarus is a country with an open economy, it pursues its own policy within its capabilities, Vladimir Semashko observed. “We could not respond to the coronavirus in the same way as Russia did. Russia is a large and rich country, third in the world in terms of gold and foreign currency reserves after China and Japan,” the ambassador said. “We do not want to count money in your pockets, but when the coronavirus threat was looming, we heard grandiose claims that Russia could afford not working for 5 or 6 years because they had enough resources, so everything would be fine. But look, two months later you made a decision to resume production because you need to pay salaries and think about the future. We could not do this in Belarus, we could not put plants and factories on hold,” he added.

Vladimir Semashko stressed that Belarus adopted a targeted approach in dealing with the coronavirus, which provided for early diagnosis and use of medicines and treatment that proved effective. “This targeted approach has yielded results,” he said.

The ambassador noted that the situation in Belarus is not worse than in Russia. According to the statistics, the number of coronavirus cases accounts for 0.5% of the population of Russia, and 1.6% of the population of Moscow. “The situation in Belarus is not worse – 0.6%,” Vladimir Semashko pointed out. “Speaking about a sad figure, the death toll, it is at 1.3% of the total number of cases in Russia and at 0.6% in Belarus. Our tally looks much better than that of the world's leading countries: deaths account for 5.3% of the total cases in the USA and 9.4% in Spain,” he said.

“We acted within our capabilities, we avoided overstretching the healthcare facilities, hospitals, and clinics, we did not have to struggle to find places for new patients. We have acted differently, but our results are close to Russia's,” Vladimir Semashko added.