- The Ministry is collaborating closely with the police to ensure compliance with safety measures.
- The Ministry of Emergency Situation is also collaborating with the Ministry to help safely organize the examinations and will be disinfecting the venues after each exam.
- Venues have been set up to ensure physical distancing, the temperature of the applicants will be taken upon arrival. There will be representatives from the Ministry Health and medical staff during the examination.
- The most important thing is to avoid any accumulation of people.
Arsen Arakelyan, Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology:
- The Institute has started the production of PCR test kits for detecting coronavirus. Arakelyan clarified that the production of tests started on March 14, after the Institute received all the needed supplies.
- In the past month and a half, the Institute was primarily focused on improving the pre-production processes, conducting necessary laboratory testing, and producing a limited number of tests, which were sent to the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention for testing.
- According to the results of the testing conducted by the Center, the accuracy of locally produced PCR tests is guaranteed and they are ready for mass production.
- The Institute is ready to produce between 2,000 to 2,500 tests every day and supply them to medical centers conducting testing upon the final confirmation by the Health Ministry.
- The Institute has been involved in the testing of a number of products which can be used in the fight against coronavirus. So far, the Institute tested the disinfecting equipment produced by the Yerevan Institute of Physics and the National Academy of Sciences.
- The Institute has also been conducting research into the molecular mechanisms of coronavirus and chemical substances which can later be used as a vaccine for COVID-19.
Questions:
Lragir.am, Roza Hovhannisyan: To what extent do we in Armenia take into consideration the opinions of different professionals? In many developed countries there are advisory bodies working adjacent to the government, that are made up of professionals from different fields who have their input in managing the COVID-19 crisis. In some countries, the government makes decisions based on the recommendations of similar bodies.
Nikol Pashinyan: Most healthcare professionals are already integrated into the healthcare system. We have already had many meetings and consultations and have agreed that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Healthcare and Social Affairs will be the body gathering different proposals and passing it on to the Special Commission. But I also want to say that there is not much new in the world about COVID-19. The information available is openly communicated. You also know that there are groups of doctors coming from different countries and we are in constant communication with doctors from the Armenian diaspora. As such, today our issue is not to figure out what needs to be done, we have an issue with implementing the laws. All professionals unanimously state that people should wear masks, abide by physical distancing rules but still, every day, we find ourselves facing large and small crisis situations. We had a similar crisis yesterday with the Varks.am company after they sent out SMS messages to all their customers saying that if they pay part of their loan before June 30, they will be exempt from penalties and yesterday we had huge groups of people gathered at their offices.
Reading the international news today, I can say that this is a problem facing the whole world and it is not just an Armenian phenomenon as we had presumed. Just recently, during the online Eastern Partnership Summit, several European leaders mentioned fake news about the virus not being real as a problem in their countries. Many countries like the U.S. and Great Britain are dealing with picnics and parties.
H2 TV Station, Arpine Tamrazyan: From the very first day of the pandemic people in Armenia started buying and wearing masks, and if wearing masks is one of the main methods to halt the spread of the virus, as the government insists, then we could say that Armenia would have won the fight against the pandemic a long time ago if the Health Minister had not convinced citizens that masks are useless. Don’t you think that today the government is complaining about the behavior of citizens which was precipitated by the announcements and actions of the government? There is also a lack of information, are you planning to put together a team of doctors who would be able to provide answers to the public?
Nikol Pashinyan: Those opinions [masks not being effective] were not just voiced by Armenia’s Health Minister but by the number one organization responsible for global health, the World Health Organization (WHO). Initially masks were mandatory for patients and those who took care of them. This was what the WHO recommended. Then with further knowledge about the virus and changing circumstances, the approach now is to treat everyone as potentially infected. I had been infected for seven days before I got tested and learned I was positive. My temperature was checked every single day yet I tested positive without having had a high temperature for any stretch of time.
The other problem was that there were no masks available in the shops and our calls to wear masks would have not been reasonable. We had to suppress the use of masks to make sure that medical staff in hospitals had the necessary supply.
There are more than ten million infected in the world currently, let us assume the Ministry of Health initially made the wrong announcement, then who made the mistakes in the remaining countries of the world? We have the same issues as the rest of the world. Almost 70,000 jobs were lost in April in Armenia and we need to face this fact. Should we be waiting for 100, 300, even 500,000 people to lose their jobs as well? Should we have left them to die of hunger instead of COVID-19? As a result of our somewhat extreme action, around 50 thousand people returned to their jobs in May, and yes, it was the result of that very same strategy that the number of infections also started increasing. But we have set it as our goal to make sure that no citizen in need of treatment is left without healthcare. The healthcare capacity continues to expand in the country, the Spitak Hospital with 100 beds equipped with oxygen, will most likely open tomorrow. The Martuni Medical Center will open with 50 beds and the Medline Center with around 60 beds will be next.
Let us step outside the logic of political manipulation for a minute. Yes, we have 20,000 cases and it was my or our fault. Whose mistake was it that resulted in ten million cases in the world then? All the countries in the world, save around five countries who have beaten the pandemic, have made mistakes. If all were wrong that means all were in the same situation. Now we need to decide if we want things to get better or worse. You say we should listen to different professional opinions, there are doctors who say COVID-19 does not exist, other advise people not to wear masks should we listen to them? Even WHO representatives say there are no right or wrong decisions, all decisions yield partial results, are wrong and right in different aspects.
