Pandemic is challenge for everyone, and can be contained only together — Medvedev

GORKI, January 28. /TASS/. No state can deal with the current novel coronavirus pandemic on its own, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Russian media outlets, including TASS. "The first lesson is easy on the one hand, but, on the other hand, it is very difficult: no one can deal with the pandemic alone, one state cannot deal with it on its own, it cannot be contained just by closing borders. Pandemic is a common challenge that should be addressed collectively," he said. The Russian official underscored the importance of developing international cooperation in this domain, and called upon states not to become isolated. "Look at the fresh example of the Omicron strain: apparently, everyone is already used to living in the conditions of a different strain, which is maybe even more severe than Omicron. Various strategies of therapy and systems of communication had been created, but when Omicron emerged, people in every country started to fall ill in tens and hundreds of thousands. And this puts a totally different load on the healthcare system," he said. Medvedev noted that although the Omicron variant was less lethal than its predecessors, lots of people were falling ill and required medical assistance. "This is a new challenge, and we need to tackle it together as well, and learn from each other’s experience," he added. Commenting on his article, headlined ‘Six lessons of one pandemic,’ Medvedev stressed that it was not just an appeal to the international community. "To be more precise, it was a description of the general situation worldwide, and of common challenges that we are facing, and of lessons that we learned by that time," he said. "I wrote an article on this issue in early 2020, and I decided one year later that I need to speak out on this matter once again." According to the deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, "the entire crisis response system" of Russia was transformed during the pandemic. "It appears to me that this system was fully created last year. We learned how to work under such circumstances, learned how to provide medical assistance, established the required network of hospitals, developed vaccines and started to use them widely. And, naturally, we learned how to live in such circumstances, much better than we did in 2020, for example," Medvedev said, describing it as an important lesson for the country. Read more