Russia’s Health Ministry sends doctors to Kurgan following local medical workers’ appeal to Putin

The Russian Health Ministry has sent a group of specialists to Kurgan to help treat COVID-19 patients, announced health minister’s aide Alexey Kuznetsov on Tuesday, October 27.

According to the official, the specialists will provide “organizational and methodological support for setting up routing and treatment,” along with direct practical assistance to patients.

Additional funding is set to be directed towards the Kurgan Region, as well, and a local trauma center will be reprofiled as a coronavirus treatment center.

On October 26, medical workers from four hospitals in Kurgan published an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking him to send military doctors to the region to help fight COVID-19. The letter described a “kind of hell going on with providing the population medical care during the pandemic.” The medical workers referred to “critical shortages” of hospital beds and medical personnel, as well as “overloaded” ambulance and emergency services.

In recent days, the Kurgan Region (home to 827,000 people) has steadily recorded 70–80 new COVID-19 cases daily. The region has registered 5,539 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and 83 deaths.