*All the windows in the building are open; the smoke in the corridors, wards, operating rooms, treatment rooms, dressing rooms, toilets, and most doctors’ rooms is just as bad as it is outside. In the intensive care unit, the windows are closed, which does nothing to reduce the stench of smoke, while the smell of dressings and excrement rotting in 40-degree heat (40°C / 104°F) spreads through the ward. Over the past 24 hours, 17 people have died in the hospital. In the 24 hours before that, 16. By this morning, the hospital morgue held 65 bodies from the previous day—ours, plus non-forensic bodies from nearby apartments. The bodies are being stored standing up in the basement—the refrigerators are already full. Ambulances are bringing in elderly people in batches with what is effectively heat stroke, but ambulance staff are forbidden, under threat of dismissal, from recording the diagnosis as “heat stroke” or “overheating” (because supposedly it isn’t hot here, everything in our city is fine). We don’t record that diagnosis either—we don’t want to be fired; we have families to feed, and if that happens we’ll have nothing to support them with. We can’t do anything except treat people. If a state of emergency were declared, medical staff would be paid double for their shifts. But no state of emergency will be declared in our city, because everything is supposedly fine—and besides, heaven forbid the country go bankrupt. The same situation exists in all Moscow hospitals. Except, probably—and unfortunately—the CDB (Central Clinical Hospital, an elite state hospital). *\\\ A question for employees of Moscow hospitals and the healthcare sector in general: how accurate is this? Update. Somewhere in the comments I saw it mentioned that this is about Hospital No. 68. If that’s true, I believe every word. I live in Maryino, and my whole family is assigned to it. Absolute hell. And that’s exactly what it’s like there even under normal circumstances. Anyone who’s been there will confirm it. “Being admitted to Hospital No. 68” and “a slow, agonizing death in a nightmare” are basically synonyms. Update 2. My wife called her friend, who works as some kind of senior cardiologist at a large Moscow hospital. She didn’t go into much detail about the situation, but she did confirm: “Yes, the death rate is very high.” Update 3. Maternity hospitals.
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