MOSCOW – A patient who had routine surgery at a hospital in St. Petersburg suddenly developed a fever after an operation.
Doctors insisted on testing him for coronavirus and results showed that he had it. And so did the Russian doctors, nurses and other patients who had unwittingly come in contact with him. “It just snowballed from there,” said Dr.
Dmitry Ptashnikov, head of the spinal surgery ward at the Vreden Institute for Traumatology and Orthopedics and one of the many medical workers who became infected.
More than half of its staff and patients — dozens in all — eventually tested positive for COVID-19. Reports of infected medical workers are emerging almost daily as Russia copes with the virus.