The meeting was held via video conference.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks
Statement by Denis Manturov on the manufacturing and supply of PPE and medicines
Excerpts from the transcript:
Mikhail Mishustin: Good afternoon, colleagues.
The situation associated with the coronavirus infection has stabilised, in general. According to experts, the spread of the coronavirus has started to decline, and the current figures offer grounds for cautious optimism. Over the past week, the daily increase in the number of new cases around the country has kept at 2.3 percent and was even 2 percent in some regions, including Moscow, Sevastopol, Crimea, North Ossetia-Alania, Chechnya and the Murmansk, Astrakhan and Magadan regions. This allowed 19 of the Russian regions to start gradually lifting the quarantine restrictions. Another 25 regions are ready for this and are planning the necessary measures.
We have promptly adjusted the national healthcare system and the regions to combating the coronavirus, which entails large-scale efforts. As a result, we have created a sizeable reserve for potential new infections. In all, we have 180,000 beds for such cases, which is enough for the regions. I would like to note that this reserve allows our medical facilities to gradually resume their routine functions: planned hospital admissions, the treatment of patients with other diseases and planned operations, especially in the case of high-tech medical assistance. This is being done in accordance with presidential instructions.
I would like to ask the Healthcare Ministry to focus on the resumption of routine functions at our federal and other medical facilities, including those that were converted to take care of the coronavirus cases.
At the same time, we are continuing to monitor the coronavirus situation. I have to say that we must be ready for any turn of events.
Colleagues, I would like to point out that we have achieved these results primarily thanks to the selflessness of our healthcare workers. Over 80,000 doctors, more than 130,000 registered nurses and over 50,000 medical technicians are helping people who have contracted this dangerous infection. I would like to once again express my deepest gratitude to every one of them. Our health workers are saving millions of lives even though their working conditions are extremely difficult.
The preventive measures and widespread testing have played their part as well. Overall, we have conducted 10 million tests during this period, and we will certainly continue doing this in full measure. In addition, all the required PPE, including masks, gloves, protective goggles, clothing and so on, must be available. During the first few weeks of the epidemic, these items were not easily available in Russia, as was also the case in the other countries hit by the infection. No country in the world had produced a sufficient amount of these items.
We swiftly launched production of the items, arranging for many enterprises to produce medical equipment, all kinds of PPE and coronavirus test kits. The Government allocated 33 billion roubles for this. According to the Industry and Trade Ministry, we currently produce nearly 9 million masks, over 250,000 sets of protective clothing and 380,000 litres of hand disinfectant every day. The rise in production of these and other items that we needed to combat the coronavirus infection has increased their availability.
And now I would like Denis Manturov to report on the developments in all of these spheres.
Denis Manturov: Mr Mishustin, colleagues. The Government has instructed us to increase the supply of PPE for medical facilities, chemists and other consumers.
We have fulfilled this task. At the first stage, in March and April, we did so predominantly by ordering deliveries from China, which were completed last week. We have reduced these imports by launching our own manufacturing of all kinds of PPE in Russia. Of great importance in this connection was a Government decision on the allocation of money to the Industry Development Fund for easy-term financing of anti-COVID projects.
Mr Mishustin, you have already mentioned the related figures. I would like to add that we will further increase the manufacturing of masks by some 4 million a day by launching new production lines, first of all in Pochep, in the Bryansk Region, where Moscow Endocrine Plant will open a branch. The project has been fully financed by the Government.
The provision of a large amount of Russian-made masks to the market has reduced retail prices many times over. According to the Federal Taxation Service, the average prices around the country have decreased from 50-55 roubles in April to 18 roubles now, and we expect the price to go down even further. The same is true about protective clothing, which cost as much as 6,000 roubles per imported disposable garment at the time of peak demand. By increasing production at home, we have dealt with the pricing fever. Russian-made disposable protective clothing costs 850 roubles per item. The price of reusable protective clothing, which we began to manufacture to meet the demand, is around 4,000 roubles, depending on how many times it can be cleaned or go through the wash.
In general, we have increased the manufacturing of all types of PPE in accordance with the requirements set out by the Healthcare Ministry and Rospotrebnadzor, including sanitiser, gloves, respirators, goggles, disposable overshoes and gowns. I will not provide the figures, because they are updated every day and made public by the coronavirus information centre.
In addition to increasing the supply of PPE, we have launched the production of PCR-based test kits. Our enterprises have launched their production and are manufacturing nearly 300,000 kits a day, in addition to the kits provided by Rospotrebnadzor.
Having closed this gap, we have launched the manufacturing of portable PCR-based test kits and increasing the production of antibody test kits based on chromatographic immunoassay technology.
I would like to say a few words about medicine. Russian pharmaceutical companies are producing sufficient amounts of 17 medicines recommended by the Healthcare Ministry for the treatment of coronavirus cases. We have registered two medications that were not produced in Russia before: Olokizumab for patients with severe pneumonia, and Avifavir for COVID cases. The registration certificate for this medicine was issued last Friday, thanks to our colleagues at the Healthcare Ministry and Roszdravnadzor.
In addition to this, we plan to start in June clinical trials of the first vaccines against the novel coronavirus that are being created by the Russian pharmaceutical companies Biocad and Generium together with the leading research establishments of the Healthcare Ministry and Rospotrebnadzor.
Mr Mishustin, we have rallied the efforts of all of the national facilities in the fight against the coronavirus. In this connection, we believe that we can start creating a fast-moving PPE reserve, as well as test kits, medicine and medical equipment against the possible exacerbation of the epidemiological situation. We can easily do this because our enterprises have no contracts for July.
In conclusion, I would like to thank all those with whom we have been working together these past months in extremely severe conditions, that is, the hundreds of industrial facilities, our colleagues in the Government, Roszdravnadzor and Rospotrebnadzor, as well as the heads of our regions.
Mr Mishustin, I would like to thank you personally for your invariable support of our initiatives aimed at attaining our objectives.
Mikhail Mishustin: Thank you, Mr Manturov, but our job is not finished. There is more work ahead.
I would just like to say a few words. We approved federal allocations for the purchase of PPE. Nevertheless, reports show that the demand for PPE, including for medics, differs from one region to another. In this connection, I would like to ask the heads of the Russian regions to assess the real demand for PPE and their available resources, so that purchase contracts for additional amounts of PPE are forwarded to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Mr Manturov, I am asking you to work together with Healthcare Minister Mr Murashko to oversee communications with the regions regarding this. And the governors are to personally monitor the situation at their regions’ medical facilities and to deal with every individual case of any shortage of PPE there.