On March 6, Interfax hosted a press conference attended by D. Lisovets, Chair of the St. Petersburg Health Committee; D. Gusev, Chief of the Infectious Diseases Hospital named after S. P. Botkin; I. Kataeva, Head of the Epidemiological Surveillance Department for St. Petersburg; Prof. D. Lioznov, Director of the Smorodintsev Research Institute of Influenza; Evgeny Shlyakhto, Director General of Almazov National Medical Research Centre; A. Totolyan, Director of the St. Petersburg Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. During the discussion, the experts summed up the results of the three-year fight against COVID-19 and spoke about further work based on the accumulated experience.
In 2020, Evgeny Shlyakhto, Director General of Almazov Centre, chaired the Interdepartmental Medical Working Group at the Interdepartmental Council on the prevention of the spread of the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) in St. Petersburg. He spoke about how for three years they solved the most relevant issues of organizing medical care for patients in all areas together with the expert community, Health Committee, Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare (Roszdravnadzor) and Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor).
“I believe that it was an absolutely right decision to unite in the fight against COVID-19 all participants: the city health system, federal and private stakeholders. About 150 meetings were held and 220 decisions were made,” said the Head of the Interdepartmental Working Group.
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Evgeny Shlyakhto emphasized the importance of the scientific approach: “The pandemic showed us, firstly, that we need to make decisions based on data, analytics, research, and secondly, we learned from the experience of fighting the infection that substantial work should be organized with the population and the professional community to increase people's trust.