Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Monday that he and members of his family have recovered from the coronavirus just over a week after testing positive for the disease.
Pashinian announced their infection and went into self-isolation on June 1. Since then he has run the Armenian government from his official residence in Yerevan where he lives with his wife and three young daughters.
Despite the self-isolation Pashinian held daily news briefings with other officials outside the residence throughout last week. The officials wore face masks and stood a couple of meters away from him during the briefings. The prime minister insisted that neither he nor any other member of his family is showing any symptoms of COVID-19.
In a Facebook post, Pashinian said that the entire family twice tested negative for the virus over the weekend. “I am returning to full-fledged work,” he said.
The 45-year-old premier suggested on June 1 that he most probably caught the virus from a government employee who served him water during a recent government meeting. He said he believes he might have only infected “as few people in the government as possible.”
No mass testing of members of Pashinian’s staff and other government officials was reported in the following days.
The Armenian authorities have recorded 13, 325 coronavirus cases and at least 211 deaths so far. The daily number of new infections has grown steadily and significantly since the authorities began lifting in mi-April a nationwide lockdown imposed in late March.
Facebook Forum