Armenia’s government dismissed on Thursday growing calls for a fresh nationwide lockdown following a record-high number of daily coronavirus deaths registered in the country.
The Ministry of Health reported in the morning that 15 more people died from coronavirus in the past day, taking the official death toll to 113.
The toll does not include the deaths of 44 other people infected with the virus. The ministry says that those fatalities were primarily caused by other, pre-existing conditions.
The ministry also reported that the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country of about 3 million rose by 442 to 8,216. The official figures suggest that more than a third of daily coronavirus tests came back positive on Wednesday.
According to Health Minister Arsen Torosian, at least 324 COVID-19 patients treated in Armenian hospitals are now in a severe or critical condition. “These numbers explain the sharp increase in deaths,” said Alina Nikoghosian, a spokeswoman for Torosian.
Torosian repeatedly warned last week of an impending shortage of intensive care beds in the hospitals, saying that they may soon be unable to give life-saving treatment to all patients. He said this could lead to a significant increase in coronavirus deaths.
The Armenian health authorities have so far set up a total of only about 200 beds at the intensive care units of the hospitals dealing with the COVID-19 epidemic. More than 150 of them were reportedly occupied as of Sunday.
The accelerating spread of the virus forced the authorities on May 22 to stop hospitalizing or isolating infected people showing mild symptoms of the disease or none at all. They also began discharging asymptomatic patients from the hospitals.
The daily numbers of new COVID-19 infections and deaths have increased significantly since the Armenian government began lifting in mid-April lockdown restrictions imposed in late March. All sectors of the Armenian economy were allowed to resume their work by May 10.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian made clear on Wednesday that despite the “quite severe situation” the government is not planning to again restrict people’s movements and shut down much of the economy. He repeated that ordinary Armenians can easily defeat the virus if they frequently wash their hands, wear face masks and practice social distancing.
About a dozen Armenian civic organizations strongly criticized on Thursday this strategy of tackling the epidemic, saying that the safety rules set by the government are flouted by many citizens and not properly enforced by the police and sanitary authorities.
In a joint statement, they warned that the country’s overstretched healthcare system is facing “collapse” because of the growing number of new COVID-19 infections. The only way to prevent a greater disaster is to impose a strict nationwide lockdown that would last for at least two weeks, said the statement.
Pashinian’s spokeswoman, Mane Gevorgian, disagreed, saying that the office of a government “commandant” enforcing a coronavirus-related state of emergency in Armenia “at the moment sees no need to again impose a lockdown.”
“That is one of the scenarios but it is not a desirable one,” Gevorgian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “Given the economic situation and the [warming] weather, it’s very hard to keep people at home.”
“People want to get out, which is why we can only urge people to follow the rules when leaving their homes: to wear masks, practice social distancing and not gather in groups,” she said.
“Very soon people will start dying [in even larger numbers,] many of them without receiving adequate medical aid,” countered one of the NGO statement’s signatories, Daniel Ioannisian of the Union of Informed Citizens.
“This is also the result of actions and inactivity of the commandant’s office and the police,” said Ioannisian. “In this sense, their approaches are unacceptable. They can’t support the economy at the expense of human lives because we are losing both the economy and lives as a result.”
The civic activist also said that the authorities failed to properly enforce the lockdown imposed by them earlier this spring. He said the coronavirus crisis has since become so serious that the authorities have not only switched to home confinement of most infected people but also stopped tracing and isolating all other individuals who have been in contact with them.
“The state is not trying to control the spread of the virus in any way simply because it has reached such a scale that the state is not even able to control,” added Ioannisian.
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