Quarantined hospital in Ufa, Russia, sees 170 patients and staff test positive for COVID-19

More than 1,000 patients and medical workers are currently quarantined in Ufa’s Kuvatov Republican Clinical Hospital. On April 10, regional Health minister Maxim Zabelin announced that 170 of them have tested positive for the new coronavirus, while the rest have tested negative. Zabelin emphasized that another round of tests will be conducted to verify those results.

On April 5, an elderly patient suffering from pneumonia and diabetes died in the hospital. The following day, her COVID-19 test came back positive, and regional health officials revealed that five doctors and two other patients were suspected to have contracted the virus. As a result, the hospital was locked down immediately with all current staff and patients still inside.

COVID-19 outbreaks in hospitals have already had a major impact on the spread of the disease in Russia. Especially in regions outside Moscow such as the Komi Republic, they have frequently accounted for a majority of new cases and forced quarantines in multiple hospitals simultaneously.