14:07

A 29-year-old Russian man diagnosed with coronavirus has became the country’s first citizen to be found ill with the disease while inside of the country, Andrew Roth reports from Moscow.

David Berov, who had returned from a ski trip to northern Italy on 23 February and checked into a hospital several days later, had tested positive for the disease, Russian authorities said on Monday. Two tests had returned negative results before a third test showed Berov was indeed infected with the coronavirus.



An ambulance car near No1 Infectious Diseases Clinical Hospital where a man with a suspected novel coronavirus infection is undergoing diagnostic testing Photograph: Andrei Vasilyev/TASS

In a series of videos reposted by Russian media, Berov filmed scenes from his quarantine, where he was being held in a single room with other suspected coronavirus patients.



“When we got there we asked the medical staff why we are all lying together in the same room – any one of us could infect the others,” Berov told the Moscow Times, an English-language newspaper, by phone from the hospital. Doctors at Moscow’s Infectious Diseases hospital No 1 had later told him not to tell Russian health officials that he had been held in a single room with other suspected coronavirus patients, the paper said.



So far, two Chinese citizens have been diagnosed with the disease in Russia and since released from hospital. Three Russians onboard the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship hit by the coronavirus while it was docked in Yokohama, Japan, have also tested positive for coronavirus.

Russia has stepped up measures against coronavirus in recent days, banning entry to Chinese citizens and to most Iranian travellers, and also deploying dozens of medical staff clad in white protective suits to meet planes arriving from Italy. More than 200 suspected coronavirus patients have been admitted to hospital in Moscow alone, Russian authorities have said.

