‘Doctors Arrived In Spacesuits’

A resident of Lida was taken to the hospital after traveling to China.

Hitchhiker Dzmitry Kandziranda, who returned from China to Belarus via Moscow, is now in the infectious diseases ward of the Lida district hospital. He was put in a separate four-seater ward, Radio Svaboda reports.

Dzmitry has been tested for coronavirus, but the tests have been sent to Minsk, since such researches are not performed in Lida. The test results are still unknown.

On February 26, a doctor called him and asked where and how long he had been in China. The doctor said that there was no need to go anywhere, the doctors themselves would come to the apartment and do an examination.

Dzmitry was at home with his girlfriend Volha, who was his company during the trip to China, and his brother.

“Doctors arrived in an ambulance car, they were wearing spacesuits,” says Dzmitry.

Dmitry had a fever and was taken to the hospital. His girlfriend also underwent tests, but she remained at home under quarantine.

“Even before the doctors examined the house, they signed papers that we won’t leave the apartment unless of urgent necessity, and if we do this, then we must wear masks,” says Dzmitry.

Dzmitry does not know whether it is possible to buy medical face masks in Lida pharmacies, but the doctors gave him about ten masks.

“I cannot go out of the ward; everything is closed. Doctors, when needed, come in masks and lab coats. They bring food. There is a special window through which food is placed in the cabinet on the other side, and from this side I open it and pick it up. There is also a toilet, a bath, a shower, hot and cold water. The only thing is that I'm a smoker, but here you can’t smoke.

“But I will tolerate this,” says Dzmitry. “The doctor says that this is not quarantine, the quarantine is in Minsk, but here it is an ordinary hospital.”

He arrived in Lida on February 23, and on February 26 the doctors called him, on the 27th he was taken to the hospital.

“I followed the same recommendations that they gave me in Moscow: to sit at home, measure the temperature twice a day, and if I feel bad, call an ambulance. But I felt fine. And when they discharge me from the hospital, I will do the same,” says Dzmitry.

The doctors called Dmitry’s girlfriend at home, and asked what her temperature was.

And how did the doctors find out that Dzmitry and Volha came to Lida after visiting China?

“It turns out that my neighbor “rat me out”. Apparently, he read somewhere about us on social networks. He lives in our house and knows my name. And he apparently called the clinic or the ambulance. It turns out that the district doctor knew it before everyone else,” says Dzmitry.

Hitchhikers Dzmitry Kandziranda from Lida and Volha Kudrashova from Minsk arrived in China on January 8 and could not leave the country because of the epidemic. On February 22, they flew to Moscow by plane.