The estimated number of people infected with coronavirus in the Russian capital is far higher than previously reported, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said Thursday.
In an interview on state news channel Rossiya-24, Sobyanin said screening studies found that between 2% and 2.5% of the city’s population – around 300,000 people – have contracted the virus. That’s around three times higher than the capital’s 92,676 officially confirmed cases.
“Our task is to identify as many of these people as possible,” Sobyanin said.
He added it was “clear that there are even more really sick people in the city” than those identified through testing.
Sobyanin said hospitals had been able to cope with an influx of patients.
“Over the past two weeks, the number of hospitalizations [of people with coronavirus] has not increased,” he said. “Moreover, the number of hospitalized and those who have been discharged shows a positive trend now. More were discharged than were hospitalized. And this is the main result of our work.”
The mayor warned, however, that lockdown and distancing measures would not end quickly.
“Today we see that it will take a long period to overcome the epidemic,” he said. “This means that for a long time we will live in a new reality, one not very comfortable for all of us.”
