Organizational measures aiming to combat COVID-19 in the Russian Federation: the first experience.

Reshetnikov, Vladimir; Mitrokhin, Oleg; Shepetovskaya, Nataliya; Belova, Elena; Jakovljevic, Mihajlo

Background Coronavirus infection (COVID-19) spreading took place in the Russian Federation in recent months. Russia has a reliable and effective governmental public health infrastructure that worked at an advanced level to control the situation since the first day of receiving reports about pneumonia of unknown etiology cases in December 2019 and the registration of the first COVID-19 cases in Wuhan, China, in January 2020. Several measures were applied (administrative, organizational, technical, sanitary, and hygiene), nevertheless, creating an adequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge for the Russian national public health authorities. Areas covered We used official information of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor), the Russian Federation Government, and Moscow Government, and the official World Health Organization (WHO); the analysis was conducted between 1st December 2019 and 31st March 2020. Expert opinion Rospotrebnadzor implemented a set of measures which comprised of three stages: 1. Stage 1 (Preventive and sanitary measures): Preventing or restricting the spread of COVID-19; 2. Stage 2 (Organizational and technical measures): Preparing connections and health facilities for the possible spread of infection; 3. Stage 3 (Organizational and preventive measures): Enforcement of self-isolation for citizens for more than 30 days, and social support measures.