Moscow Doctors to Combine Treatment for Coronavirus and Pneumonia Patients

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – Because existing tests for coronavirus infections are far from accurate and because those who suffer from it often require the same kind of treatments those suffering from pneumonia do, a new clinical committee in Moscow has called for combining into a single system the separate medical streams in which coronavirus and pneumonia patients are treated.

            “At the present time,” the clinicians say, “the overwhelming majority of cases of pneumonia are the result of the new coronavirus,” a trend “especially pronounced in the last several days” (t.me/COVID2019_official/226 and znak.com/2020-04-09/v_moskve_mogut_obedinit_stacionary_dlya_bolnyh_koronavirusom_i_pnevmoniey).

            They add that existing tests for the coronavirus are only 70 to 80 percent accurate and that “in certain cases, testing gives false-negative results.” The share of such results, the doctors continue, is thus “significant.” And that reality, they say, must guide the way in which patients are processed and treated.

            “If when brought to a hospital, a patient does not have the results of a test but during examination in the admissions department manifests clinical signs of pneumonia-COVID 19, then he should be hospitalized and treated as someone ill with a COVID infection,” the committee declared.

            Their proposal has already been accepted by Aleksey Khripun, the head of the healthcare department of the Russian capital.

            This move is important for the assessment of the number of coronavirus cases in Russia for three reasons. First, it is a rare acknowledgement in the Russian media that the tests being used for COVID 19 are not nearly as accurate as officials have previously claimed and that there are many false negatives.

            Second, it means that the 37 percent spike in pneumonia patients in Moscow in January almost certainly was related to the pandemic, with untested or undiagnosed coronavirus victims being classified as having only pneumonia and dying from that rather than COVID 19 (rospotrebnadzor.ru/about/info/news/news_details.php?ELEMENT_ID=14210).

            And third, it likely means that some Russians suffering from ordinary pneumonia may be unnecessarily exposed to and thus contract the coronavirus in the course of their treatment. If doctors are now inclined to classify those with certain kinds of pneumonia as COVID 19 sufferers and treat them together, that is an entirely reasonable conclusion.

            At the very least, this development is yet another reason why Russian statistics on the coronavirus pandemic there should be treated with greater skepticism than they are currently eliciting. More is at work than simply the amount of testing in which places where there are few or no tests report few or no cases or outright falsification.