Belarus’s response to the coronavirus has enabled it to maintain a “tolerable” rate of infection, and other countries are beginning to see the value of Minsk’s approach, President Alexander Lukashenko has said.
“The situation in Belarus today when it comes to viruses and other diseases, which we’ve had and continue to have plenty of, is tolerable. We’re not saying that everything is great…But the method which we have been using for three months now is bearing fruit, and other states have taken advantage of our method, our approach,” Lukashenko said, speaking to officials in Minsk on Tuesday.
The Belarusian president pointed out that at the moment, many Western countries have begun to open up, easing lockdown restrictions and resuming the work of their economies, even while in some cases, “their mortality per day can exceed total [COVID-19-related] deaths in Belarus over the past three months.”
“Look to the east and Russia, our friend, our kindred country, has opened up its construction complex, industrial enterprises, and other key sectors of the economy. This is more than 90 percent of the population who will go back to work. Rich Russia, which has accumulated huge foreign exchange reserves and national wealth fund, realized that there could be bad consequences [from continuing the lockdown],” Lukashenko said.
Lukashenko also warned officials that he would continue to monitor the development of the coronavirus situation closely, and hold the relevant ministers responsible for any spikes in the mortality rate. The president suggested that although the numbers of infections will sooner or later be forgotten, “the people who’ve died, but whom we could have saved but did not save will be remembered.”
Pinpoint Response
Lukashenko also recalled Belarus’s pinpoint approach to fighting coronavirus, including the treatment of symptom-free COVID-19 patients in their homes and quarantining them. “In Minsk, for example, about 270 brigades have been formed which keep tabs on a certain number of these patients. And if there is any deterioration in their condition, we immediately hospitalize them.”
“As soon as we detect that someone somewhere is sick, we immediately begin to test the people he or she has come into contact with and to isolate them. This is a pinpoint method of fighting [coronavirus], instead of a head-on frontal approach of isolating [everyone]…Let’s work calmly and without hysteria in this direction. The cadres have been put in place,” Lukashenko concluded.
Belarus has reported a total of 24,873 cases of COVID-19 and 142 coronavirus-related fatalities, and had carried out over 299,000 tests (equivalent to roughly three percent of its population) by the end of last week.
