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Lithuania to send team of doctors to Armenia

Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry announced today that they will be sending a team of doctors to Armenia to help in the country’s fight against the spread of COVID-19.

In late April, Lithuania pledged to allocate €100,000 ($113,000) to Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine as humanitarian assistance. On 14 May, the Lithuanian government also sent 10,600 protective face shields to Armenia.

Nineteen employees of Azerbaijani Presidential Administration test positive

Nineteen employees of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration have tested positive for COVID-19, Ramin Bayramli,  the chair of the Management Union of Medical Territorial Units, has announced. 

He added that five employees of the Ministry of Emergency situations had also been infected along with several cases in the Ministry of Labour.

Aid from UAE arrives in North Caucasus

The North Caucasus has received a shipment of protective equipment and tests from the United Arab Emirates, head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has announced.

Writing on his Vkontakte page Kadyrov said that two flights had landed at the Grozny airport and that the aid would be distributed to  Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia.

‘Positive dynamics’ in Daghestan

Daghestan’s Health Minister, Dzhamaludin Gadzhiibragimov, has said that there are ‘positive dynamics’ in the republic at a meeting of the republic’s COVID-19 Operational Headquarters.

Despite this, he said it was too early to begin lifting restrictions, a sentiment echoed by the regional head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, Nikolay Pavlov. 

At the meeting, which was led by Head of Daghestan Vladimir Vasilyev, it was decided to consider 15 June as the approximate date to start lifting restrictions.

South Ossetia’s Anatoly Bibilov ‘in self-isolation’

South Ossetian President Anatoly Bibilov has begun working remotely from his residence in Java (Dzau) on the eve of his trip to Moscow, according to his office. 

Bibilov plans to attend a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II, which has been rescheduled to 24 June.

According to his office, he will self-isolate for 12 days upon returning to South Ossetia.

South Ossetia also plans to hold their own Victory Day parade on the same day in Tskhinvali (Tskhinval). 

As of today, South Ossetian authorities have reported a total of 66 cases of COVID-19, with 34 having already recovered. 

 For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.

Summary

Welcome to OC Media’s coronavirus live updates for Wednesday, 10 June. We will be bringing you the latest news on the COVID-19 pandemic from around the Caucasus.

The biggest developments from yesterday:

During a meeting with directors of a number of medical centres in the country, Armenia’s Health Minister Arsen Torosyan claimed that there will be enough hospital beds for new patients provided the rate of new cases remains the same. 

After the country reached hospital bed capacity several days ago, authorities have decided to re-profile medical centres in the cities of Dilijan, Spitak, Vedi and Martuni admit COVID-19 patients. As a result, 350 new beds will be added which, according to Torosyan, is a 15% increase over the current capacity. 

A group of residents of Malokarachayevsky District in Russia’s North Caucasus Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia confronted regional Health Minister Kazim Shamanov today, accusing the local authorities of hiding the true number of coronavirus pandemic fatalities. 

Officials invited residents for a discussion after some of them held a spontaneous rally outside a local hospital yesterday. They claimed that the government failed to ensure their relatives were tested and treated for COVID-19. 

Local authorities have denied that the numbers are inaccurate, and have attributed fatalities not to COVID-19 but to complications from the virus. As yesterday, the official number of fatalities stands at 9 (out of  1,729 cases), one of the lowest in the region. 

The Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan told state news agency Azertag that the quarantine regime in the country will be prolonged until 1 July. 

They also stated that the major cities of Baku, Ganja, Sumgayit, Lenkoran, and the Absheron district will be locked down from 14 to 16 June. 

Read the latest stories:

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• Armenian COVID-19 ‘fake news’ site was funded by US
• ‘A lost year’ — How the global pandemic has hit Azerbaijan’s economy
• COVID-19 outbreak in Daghestan ‘significantly understated’
• Armenia continues to reopen despite steady growth in new cases of COVID-19
• Chechens ‘beaten and detained’ by security forces for leaving home on Eid al-Fitr
• New law allows Georgian government to restrict rights without declaring state of emergency
• WHO recommendations ‘widely disregarded’ in South Ossetia’s Akhalgori
• Man disappears in Grozny after returning to be with family during pandemic
• Georgian Health Ministry cancels contract for ‘Dutch-made’ tests that were made in China
• Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh ‘vulnerable to COVID-19 pandemic’
• Georgia plans corona-safe ‘tourist zones’
• Critical shortages‘ of protective equipment reported in Daghestan’s hospitals
• Transgender woman sets herself on fire in Tbilisi
• Voice | The women on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Police clash with anti-stay-at-home protesters in North Ossetia