2,000 medics in Moscow either recovered from virus or still sick

FILE PHOTO: Russian city of Moscow. /Xinhua.

Some 25,000 medics in Moscow have been tested for coronavirus antibodies and 2,000 of them have tested to have such antibodies, including some 1,000 who are still sick, Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Saturday.

"Of course, they [medics - TASS] are now on the frontline. For example, I can say that we have conducted large-scale testing, we have conducted 25,000 enzyme immunodetection tests among public health sector employees. About 2,000 have proved to have antibodies, which means that they have had the disease. However half of them are still sick. In other words, about 1,000 people are still ill and 1,000 have recovered," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.

He recalled Russian President Vladimir Putin's instruction to pay an extra sum of 80,000 rubles (over 1,000 US dollars) to medics. Earlier, an extra payment of 70,000 rubles was appointed to medics in Moscow.

The mayor also noted that the city authorities were organizing hotel accommodations for medics near their hospitals so that they did not have to travel across the city to their homes. He said that by now, around 4,000 hotel rooms had been booked for these purposes.

SOURCE: Russian News Agency