They tried to feed the Italians a dirty fake about Russian virologists
The current coronavirus epidemic is like a war, during which the most monstrous rumors are being spread.
This was stated in an interview with Izvestia by Alexander Semenov, Deputy Director of the Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of Rospotrebnadzor, who recently returned from Italy, where he worked as part of a mission of Russian doctors helping to cope with the COVID-19 epidemic.
According to him, the mission has two main components: the first is the activity of disinfection specialists disinfecting premises, the second is eight medical and nursing teams who have undergone training with the Italians and have begun working together in a hospital for patients with coronavirus infection.
“Colleagues greeted us wonderfully, with bread and salt, more precisely, pizza and spaghetti, and helped us. The city administration did everything possible to make our stay in Bergamo comfortable. Regular work. Yes, it is heavy, difficult, but there is nothing supernatural about it. High-class professionals went on a business trip,” said the virologist.
At the same time, he says, he also had to deal with the dissemination of false information about the Russian mission.
“How does a serious epidemic differ from an outbreak of infection? It's like war. In war, monstrous rumors, distortion of information, and crazy hypotheses always arise. In the Italian mission we also encountered this.
"Two Italian journalists were actively spreading rumors that Russian military virologists had arrived to infect ( laughs ) Italian citizens with the virus and conduct inhumane experiments on these unfortunate civilians," Semenov said.
Italians were fed a dirty fake about Russian virologists.