BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 1
Trend:
The decision to introduce restrictive measures was not an easy one, said Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev during a videoconference with President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Suma Chakrabarti, Trend reports.
“We understood perfectly well that it would create inconveniences for people, a major blow would be dealt to our economic development despite the fact that this year's indicators were quite reassuring. But we had two options. The first option is to protect the life and health of our people and the second is to prioritize the saving of the economy. Therefore, we chose the protection of people's lives from the very beginning. This is the goal of all our work, and we fully mobilized our efforts in this direction. We conducted more than 120,000 tests and are in one of the leading places for their number per capita,” said President Ilham Aliyev.
The head of state noted that additional laboratories were set up, which are currently 18.
“Patients infected with coronavirus are being treated in 22 public hospitals, including the recently commissioned modern hospital with 575 beds. Currently, about 2,000 of our citizens are in quarantine, and this figure is decreasing. These are the people who came from abroad and those who were in contact with them. They have been placed in four- and five-star hotels and have the conditions that meet high standards. The result of the restrictive measures being occasionally tightened was positive, and we have been observing positive dynamics for two weeks now, i.e. more people are recovering than become infected. The relatively low mortality rate suggests that the work is being done right. We started to relax restrictive measures yesterday,” said President Ilham Aliyev.