Via The Siberian Times, a March 14 report: Seven time zones of Siberia and Russian Far East are almost clear of coronavirus - but why? Excerpt:
On the face of it Siberia and the Russian Far East has defied the odds and currently only two confirmed cases of Covid-19 according to reports of locations of coronavirus infections.
Russia has registered low numbers with a total on Saturday of 47, a figure which includes those now clear of the virus.
Two of these were in Siberia: a man named Wan Yunbin, 30, in the city of Chita, and a female student called Lesley in Tyumen. Both were certified as having recovered from the illness by 13 February.
Today two separate cases were confirmed in Kemerovo city in western Siberia, with one more suspected in Novokuznetsk.
And in the country’s most easterly region Chukotka, a miner who flew back to Russia from an Italian holiday, is suspected to have caught coronavirus. He has been hospitalised as a precaution but his infection is not yet confirmed.
Even so, some see Siberia the go-to place in the world to avoid coronavirus. The low numbers of infection are exceptional.
We spoke to Dr Alexander Chepurnov, a leading virologist who previously headed research into ebola at the world famous Russian State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, Vector, in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk region.
‘I'm not that sure that all is so safe here,’ he said. ‘I cannot find any explanation [to the fact that a low number of people have been diagnosed with the virus in Russia] and that is why doubts gnaw at me.’
He said: ‘What is worrying, in my opinion, is that I do not understand why they do not take samples from all people with pneumonia.
‘All these cases are now ascribed to seasonal flu.’
Moscow, for example, appears to show a spike in pneumonia cases of 37% in January compared with a year earlier.
‘We have a lot of pneumonia cases, and I see that in hospitals they do not take samples,’ Chepurnov said, evidently fearing that these patients might suffer from coronavirus.
'That means that maybe the web is not cast very wide.
‘I cannot quite understand the situation, and I am not sure that the conclusion about the safety of our region is right.
‘In general it looks rather strange: the part of the country that directly borders with China, with a large number of people that cross the border here and there, has such a calm situation in terms of coronavirus. It is quite surprising.’
