As the coronavirus spread across the world in the early months of the year, Russia stood out for its low number of cases. The Kremlin insisted that there was no outbreak and that the few confirmed cases were of people who had arrived from other countries and were being strictly quarantined. Anyone who had been in contact with them was identified and also placed in isolation. Pundits on state TV told people there was nothing to worry about and took undisguised pleasure in discussing the havoc being caused in the EU and the United States.
All that changed in the last week of March, when Vladimir Putin visited the elite hospital, in the Kommunarka district just outside Moscow, that is now dedicated to treating COVID-19 patients. He put on a full hazmat suit to enter the ward but also, bizarrely, toured the hospital in sportswear together with a doctor, Denis Protsenko, and even shook his hand. A few days later, Protsenko was diagnosed with the coronavirus, and Putin started working remotely, but subsequently, in early April, he met visitors and shook their hands. Putin and the Russian population in general appeared uninformed about asymptomatic transmission and coronavirus symptoms.
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