Biosafety Tsarina meets with Putin

Meeting with the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova

Head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing Anna Popova

She has a very long title and list of areas to manage the most important being the management of what the Kremlin calls “measures to ensure epidemiological safety in the country.” Given what’s known about the Outlaw US Empire’s experiments on developing biological weapons of mass destruction, a new emphasis was placed just after the SMO’s start and the discoveries of what was present within the CIA’s BioLabs located within Ukraine. The Kremlin further notes the conversation was about “the work of the unified information and analytical system of Rospotrebnadzor and the development of a pathogen monitoring network.” Based on what Russia’s discovered, this work has strategic significance. I’m certain much was discussed after the cameras were turned off:

Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon!

You have a professional holiday. I congratulate you.

In recent years, you and your employees have experienced serious challenges, in fact, together with the whole country, of course. You have done well, and I hope you will do so in the future.

How is the work going?

A. : Mr President, thank you very much.

First, of course, thank you for your congratulations, for your high appreciation, which is incredibly important for us, for your constant attention to the affairs of the service, for the fact that you always hear us, listen to us, and once again for your support.

Two years ago, in the Alexander Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, you told us, the entire staff, that among the priorities is the formation of a sanitary shield for our country, and the main task is to protect citizens from various current threats: biological, hygienic and future.

If you will allow me, I will try to briefly report on what we have managed to do during this time in the framework of a serious program, a serious task that you have set for us, which is being carried out on your behalf.

If we take last year, we looked at what we gave to the country, how we are implementing our tasks. It turned out that the prevented economic damage as a result of the reduction in the number of cases of infectious diseases, as a result of the measures that are being taken, amounted to 865.9 billion rubles. And the prevented losses due to environmental factors, when we were able to prevent non – communicable diseases through our efforts, amounted to 213.3 billion rubles.

And what is important, the level of confidence in our sanitary and epidemiological measures has increased by 15 percent. It seems to me that this is also a result that we will develop further.

A unified information and analytical system has been created. We now receive information within just a few seconds about every case of an infectious disease that occurs in the Russian Federation and is recorded by medical professionals. Information immediately gets to the central office from any point and also remains in place so that we can analyze it.

Here are small figures about the amount of data and knowledge we receive today. In order not to make a mistake, we entered into this database information about what happened during the last 30 years, so that you can compare and understand all the trends that are happening.

A small diagram just shows what we can see. And we can see how in the case of intestinal infections, viruses displace bacteria. We have fewer and fewer diseases caused by bacteria, salmonella, dysentery pathogens, and more and more of those caused by viruses. This means that we are changing the vector of our actions, diagnostics, PCR diagnostics, and detection.

And, of course, there are a large number of results that we can use to protect our population.

Vladimir Putin: And why is this happening?

A. Popova: Viruses multiply faster. Viruses replicate faster.

Vladimir Putin: They've done this before. What has changed now?

Anna Popova: Mr President, we have never behaved like this before. We communicate a lot, much more than we did 100 years ago. We have completely changed our lives in 150 years. We have more contacts, we have more food outside the home, and we already depend on how certain people follow the rules.

The food preparation system has also changed. If earlier there were small enterprises or one cow at home, now these are enterprises that produce a huge amount of products at the same time.

And here the importance of our measures and our control is very great, because any violation immediately causes a risk for a large number of the population. And viruses take advantage of this and, accordingly, very quickly penetrate the body. Plus, they are smaller and harder to deal with conventional disinfection. But they adapt in a changing world, which the person himself changes.

I will not dwell on all the numbers; they are in front of you.

We have formed a three-level pathogen monitoring network. First, PCR, which has long been a well-known method. But if earlier there were PCR laboratories, now there are PCR centers that accumulate information and also transmit numbers.

Sequencing centers. You can see the increase: there were 14 in 2019, but the pandemic pushed. Thank you very much for your support of our proposals, as we now have 54 sequencing centers – that's a lot.

Of course, high-security laboratories. There were five of them, and today there are twenty. We can work with the most dangerous pathogens and the same viruses to detect them.

Mobile laboratories are a significant contribution to reach anywhere in our country. We have also increased capacity: there were five laboratories, now 71. We can very quickly reach almost any point in the Russian Federation where there are roads, in order to help patients with the infection and find out what happened. Here you can see the network of mobile laboratories that we have. They are all based on Russian cars – high-pass vehicles that are made according to our special rules and standards and can enter our planes equipped with the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

Mr President, if I may, I would like to present to you what we are currently working on. Taking into account that roads are roads, and the demand is high, today, together with Rostec, together with Russian Helicopters, we are developing the same well – protected and high-performance laboratory with removable modules based on our Ka helicopter. We really hope that in the next three years we will be able to show it already working. It will provide security in different parts of our country and abroad.

Our technologies for combating infectious diseases are very popular in different countries.

This was your assignment when we started collecting information about all the sequencers in the entire country related to infectious pathogens. Today it all works, and today not only COVID, but more than 40 pathogens are already present: flu, various respiratory viruses, hepatitis, and HIV.

In this way, we provide complete control over viruses and immediately see whether it changes or does not change, whether there is a difference or not, whether there is a mutation or not. There are a number of different departments here, and they are very actively cooperating with this system. This way, we see significantly more and can also react significantly faster.

Another assignment you gave me is population-based immunological surveillance. We began to understand how the population is immune to measles, rubella, and not just COVID-we started with COVID in covid-19 times.

In the Kherson region: we don't know how people were vaccinated there, documents are not available everywhere. It turns out that they were vaccinated very badly, very, very badly. Today, this is an obvious problem. If immunity, for example, against mumps, against mumps, in general in the country – 97-98 percent, here-65.7. We now need to make a lot of efforts to avoid complications, which we are doing. The same is true for diphtheria-83 percent; for polio. This is not a particularly acute problem, because we are already working together with the healthcare system to ensure that there are no problems.

For other infections: You can also see that there is a lot of West Nile fever there. There is no appeal, and almost 11 percent of the population is immune. So, people met, got sick. And what, what diagnosis they were given, now we do not know.

The same goes for Crimean hemorrhagic fever. This is a serious disease, 12.5 percent of the population met with it, but there are no diagnoses, it is not described anywhere, and, accordingly, no measures were taken. We are doing this today and will continue to do so. Such monitoring allows us to see what is happening.

Of course, new tools, new test systems, very fast. Today we have already made 49 new test systems, which are tested in the device for 30 minutes instead of an hour and a half. Of course, here, when answering one of your questions at a conference, we include only those viruses that pose a high health risk in our test systems.

Respiratory-250. It doesn't make sense to test too much on 250, because if a person met and everything went well within two days, it's one story. And up to 50 viruses – when you meet and feel very bad, they need to be identified as early as possible. We are "stitching" them here, into these new test systems.

Vladimir Putin: You don't "sew up" a “snot virus.”

A. Popova: There is simply no point in that.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Thank you.

A. Popova: Thank you very much. [My Emphasis]

Ms. Popova has made excellent progress over the two years since Putin provided his directives. And Russia’s medical system overall has made great improvements in all areas, from access and treatment to research. Russia’s proper position that healthcare is a human right helps it do the right thing regarding the expansion and modernization of its healthcare treatment and educational systems where even the remotest Arctic village as access to basic levels of care. Why Russian medical technologies are so popular outside of Russia is an excellent question to ask and reflects Russia’s credibility when it comes to providing aid without political strings. I’m curious to discover how much information Russians are provided with beyond the Ministry of Defence’s annual briefing on the bioweapon threat which I recently reported about.

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