“People sit and stand on top of each other to get to the clinic”: residents of Russian regions are shocked by giant queues at medical facilities

Residents of Russian regions report queues shocking in their length both in adults and in children’s medical institutions. At best, patients, among whom there are also citizens with symptoms of SARS, are crowded in the corridors of hospitals, at worst, they are waiting for their turn on the streets.

So, residents of Blagoveshchensk (Amur Region) stand in queues for several hours, both in order to take a test, and in order to open a sick leave. According to the portal 2×2, in Polyclinic No. 1, people were allocated a corridor in the basement, and in Polyclinic No. 4, some patients have to wait in the street for their turn. Patients of the Lipetsk City Polyclinic No. 7 also lined up in gigantic queues. As the head physician of this medical institution, Igor Volkorezov, explains, in the morning about 300 people came to the infectious boxes at once, which the polyclinic simply could not accommodate.

Real pandemonium is also observed in the medical institutions of Syktyvkar, where citizens have to queue at eight in the morning in order to have time to get an appointment. “People take a queue with a temperature from 7 in the morning, they let them in only from 8.00,” one of the townspeople reports. I arrived at 7:45 and left at 9:45. People stand in line on the first floor, at the entrance, in the corridor and on the street.”

In Murmansk, it is almost impossible to get through to a polyclinic, medical facilities receive 2,000 messages a day, so the city dwellers willy-nilly have to line up. And in one of the polyclinics of the Kirovsky district of Kemerovo, patients are seen by one doctor. According to outraged citizens, whose reviews are cited by local media, all the forces of doctors “go to fight the coronavirus.”

Notebook-Voronezh also reports queues in which it is impossible to maintain social distance, while patients complain that doctors do not have the opportunity to conduct a full examination. Residents of Samara, who need to close the sick-list, spend in queues for several hours, KP reports. Residents of the Trans-Baikal Territory report gigantic queues crowded with both sick and healthy, while citizens are confident that such “comfort” will lead to an increase in the number of new infections.

“When you stand in line at the reception to find your card and pick it up, you go to the therapist and stand in another line to either extend the sick leave or close it. There is nothing to breathe, stuffy, hot, you are in clothes, the state is crazy, because it’s really hard. A question for the authorities: how do you want to cure the people and minimize the risks of infection if the people sit and stand on top of each other?” – asks a rhetorical question from one of the residents of Chita, who tried to get into the city polyclinic No. 1.

Meanwhile, the regions are trying to attract additional specialists to medical institutions, and are also counting on the help of future doctors – student volunteers. Patients are being asked to call call centers during daylight hours to reduce pressure, and even private clinics can’t handle calls.