Russia: Journalist dies after testing positive for Covid-19, authorities remain in denial
/
RUSSIA, Perm, April 8, 2020 -- Russian journalist Anastasia Petrova succumbed to Covid-19 on March 31. Even though regional health authorities denied the possibility of the novel coronavirus, the facts in Anastasia case stated otherwise. The Coalition For Women In Journalism extends its condolences to her family and friends during this time of grief.
The 36-year-old Anastasia - chief editor of Delovoy Interes business weekly - felt unwell, after which she was hospitalised with pneumonia. She shared a post on Facebook on March 23, wherein she wrote, “Today should have been my first day of vacation, but instead it’s my first day of sick leave.”
“During the night, I developed a high fever. I had a sore throat and a nasty cough. I called the doctor and answered their questions about my contacts with people who had returned from abroad (there were three of them, but all had returned more than two weeks before).” she added.
She wrote that she’d been using ibuprofen in a bid to reduce her fever and wrote about the way she was treated by the medical staff, who were not too helpful with respect to getting her diagnosis done. Her fever eventually spiked but no one took care of it.
“No one came to take a coronavirus test and no one returned my calls, of course. I have no congestion, but am coughing.”she wrote in the early morning hours of March 24.
On March 26, Anastasia reported that her first coronavirus test had come back negative. But on March 29, Anastasia’s friend Yulia Balabanova, who is also a local journalist, received a message from her saying that the second test was positive. She revealed this information after her friend’s death.
In a press conference on April 1, the Health Minister of Russia Oksana Melekhova said that Petrova had “double pneumonia.” However, a few hours after Yulia’s post, authorities stated that the official cause of Petrova’s death is “double pneumonia brought on by a coronavirus infection.”
We are deeply saddened at Anastasia’s passing but also feel agonized knowing that Russian authorities brushed off her health condition, leaving her to die of the threatening virus. We demand that all those involved in taking Anastasia’s health lightly should be brought to justice. Authorities must do better than to hide facts and let people die at the hands of a global pandemic.
