Sick and dead from COVID-19 doctors in Russia
The exact number of dead doctors, nurses and orderlies,
In some Russian hospitals, a large number of doctors have already become infected with COVID-19, so such medical centers have to be closed for quarantine, but this does not always happen.
Today in Russia COVID-19 fell ill165 thousand people, of which 1,537 people died - about 1%. Moreover, in the project “List of memory”, which is being led by an initiative group of Russian doctors, there are more than 100 names of doctors who died from coronavirus — 5% of all deaths.
According to the creators of this project, “ListMemory" also does not pretend to be objective, since its developers add people to the list of dead people based on official data or statements of their colleagues or relatives. The doctors do not plan to check the information they received.
However, to say exactly the number of deaths fromcoronavirus doctors and the volume of these deaths from the total number of deaths from coronavirus in the country will be possible later on the basis of data on the increase in total mortality in the country, since many people dying from COVID-19 simply do not have a diagnosis. At the same time, doctors in Russia are tested very often, because they can be one of the main carriers of the disease to other people.
The death of doctors as a catalyst for the state of medicine
The exact number of infected and deaddoctors in the world has not yet been disclosed. In the UK, about 100 medical staff also died in an epidemic similar to Russia, while the total number of deaths in the country is about 30 thousand people, and the BBC even made a large long list listing the dead doctors and describing their lives. In Italy, the first 100 dead doctors were when 18 thousand people died in the country.
This indicator of medical mortalityThe number of employees in Russia may be related to several factors - either not all deaths from COVID-19 are recorded, or Russian doctors have much less protective equipment than their counterparts from other countries.
“We see that many of our colleagues are sick, manyare dying,” said the creators of «Memory List» in an interview with Lenta.ru. “And there is no attempt to calculate or find out in detail what is happening.”
Many experts note quite a lotthe number of strange things in death statistics. For example, in Dagestan, 13 deaths from COVID-19 were recorded, of which 9 people are doctors working with patients with coronavirus. At the same time, the average mortality of doctors in the world is about 0.5% of all deaths, and not 70%, as in Dagestan.
There are also many stories like doctorsbecome infected with coronavirus. One of the most notorious in recent weeks is the case of medical assistant Dmitry Seregin from Orel. He went to the patient’s call without special protective equipment - in a simple mask and gloves, because no one had them, and then it turned out that the man had hidden that he was sick with COVID-19. As a result, Seregin and his two colleagues fell ill with COVID-19, then at least 10 more people fell ill in the hospital, and she was quarantined.
Another doctor, Daniyal Alkhasov, said thatstarted volunteering late last month at the intensive care hospital in Khasavyurt in Dagestan. He was provided with a protective suit, but there were no respirators or other personal protective equipment, so a few days later the doctor fell ill from the patients. According to Alkhasov, when he arrived for his first shift, a nurse in the gynecology department was in the intensive care unit with coronavirus. “When I came back [for my second shift], she died,” he said. “And I didn’t see her on the list of deaths from COVID-19.”
About a large number of problems in Russianin hospitals associated with a lack of protective equipment, doctors said in a large material of the "Revision" project. Especially often they complain about the system of separation of zones into “clean” and “dirty”. In the "dirty" zone, doctors work with patients with an official diagnosis of COVID-19 - most often such doctors have all the protective equipment. Moreover, it happens that at first the patients are brought to the “clean” zone, where the doctors go in a simple mask and gloves, people lie there a few days before the diagnosis, and only then they are transferred to the “dirty” zone. During this time, patients manage to infect not only other patients, but also doctors.
However, there are several studiesmortality of doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they all came out in late March 2020. Then, based on 200 deaths, scientists compiled an average portrait of the deceased doctor - in 90% of cases, men died from COVID-19. The average age of deceased doctors was 63.4 years - from 28 to 90 years. At the same time, 78 people from the sample were general practitioners and emergency departments, 5 were respirators, 11 were internal medicine specialists and 6 were anesthetists. Another 4 people were epidemiologists, 4 - specialists in infectious diseases, 9 - dentists, 8 - specialists of ENT, 7 - ophthalmologists.
In the study, the leader in the number of deaths wasItaly - 80 cases from all statistics, in the second Iran - 43 cases, in the third China - 16 cases, in the fourth Philippines - 14 cases, in the fifth Indonesia - 7 people.
Scientists note: this study shows that doctors of any specialty can die from COVID-19, regardless of their direction.
At the same time, doctors are dying from a lack of protective equipment.not only in Russia, but also in other countries. For example, in the Philippines, at least 21 doctors died (and 740 doctors fell ill), in the USA - 27 doctors (out of 8 thousand doctors sick with COVID-19). The exact number of doctors who died from coronavirus in Iran is still unknown, but experts say that there are definitely at least several hundred people. In total, at least 1 thousand doctors have died from COVID-19 in the world.
The leading cause of death for doctors ishospitals are unprepared to receive COVID-19 patients, as well as insufficient early testing. They - regardless of country - lack adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for their staff. Therefore, many doctors have to re-wear surgical masks, and instead of anti-plague suits, put on raincoats, garbage bags or painting suits, and many Russian hospitals admit patients in inappropriate conditions - often in corridors and walk-through rooms.
At the same time, WHO is studying the trendinfection of doctors with COVID-19 in all countries of the world, since in some countries this figure is up to 10% of the total number of patients, for example, in Georgia and Italy.