Opinions & Interviews

“Waking up to reality”: Expert comments on US Congress’ COVID-19 report

Dmitry Shevtsov. An archive photo

MINSK, 6 December (BelTA) – America has finally realized that its COVID-19 response strategy was wrong, Secretary General of the Belarus Red Cross, Chairman of the Belarusian Association of Doctors Dmitry Shevtsov told BelTA commenting on the report “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward” released by the US Congress Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic following a two-year investigation into the matter. This report effectively acknowledges that the type of the COVID-19 response strategy chosen by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko was right.

“As a person who was deeply involved in the coronavirus response effort, I saw better than others that the response strategy implemented by our country upon the instruction of Aleksandr Grigorievich was absolutely correct. The president was the only one who said that we should not panic. He warned us of the danger of infodemic. In one of his powerful speeches he rightfully asked: what will we eat if we shut everything down and put ourselves on lockdown like the rest of the world? Subsequent developments showed that our president was absolutely right. Yet, our opponents tried in every possible way to smear us. They mocked us, criticized the way we responded to the pandemic. Our people continued to work, observing all precautions: surface and hand hygiene, masks. The disease rate here was no higher than in other countries, because collective immunity is also very important,” said Dmitry Shevtsov.

It was obvious that the situation around the COVID-19 pandemic was escalated from the outside, but it made our country stronger. “While everyone was panic-stricken, we were penetrating new markets, we did not sink our economy. And this all thanks to the fact that we kept working. We provided ourselves with food, grain, we kept exporting, we made the most of the situation. And even when the whole world acknowledged it, our opponents were still in denial. And now, many years on, America has finally woke up to the reality and admitted in its report that its policy was wrong,” the expert noted.

According to him, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the president took responsibility upon himself, unlike Western leaders. “We know that all of Europe was put on lockdown. It would be much easier to employ the wait-and-see approach, because everyone was doing the same. It would be much harder to go against the flow and say that we would keep working. The president received daily updates from the healthcare minister, other officials, on how the situation was developing, what measures were taken, who was consulted, how the vaccine development project was proceeding, etc. The head of state kept his finger on the pulse every day, because he was responsible for the entire country. That’s his modus operandi. The president is the guarantor of our security in every sense of the word,” added Dmitry Shevtsov.

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