22 May 2020 19:11

Coronavirus immunity screening to be launched in Russia in late June - Popova

MOSCOW. May 22 (Interfax) - A population-based study to check for the presence of immunity to coronavirus will begin between June 20 and June 30 and cover 0.5% of people in Russia, head of the Federal Service for Health and Consumer Rights (Rospotrebnadzor) Anna Popova said.

"The next stage that we'll move to is population-based studies. We need to understand how many people in the population have immunity. We are to begin this work between June 20 and June 30, and our goal is to make sure that people build up an immunity, which is what has to be certified. We're planning to encompass with this study approximately 0.5% of the entire population, twice as many as the number of people thus far affected in this situation," Popova said at a meeting on the sanitary-epidemiological situation in the country chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

This is a very promising avenue, and it will help with understanding how well this country is prepared for autumn, and with what kind of figures we can move on to the next stage," she said.