Watch Dozens Of Ambulances Line Up Outside Moscow Hospital As Russian COVID-19 Cases Soar

Russian President Vladimir Putin has imposed a national lockdown across Russia until the end of the month to try and fight the coronavirus, after Russia’s bold attempt to block transmission including border closures and severe travel restrictions that were at the time some of the most aggressive in the world, it seems the country’s effort either fell apart, or the virus managed to sneak inside anyway.

Now, Russia has roughly 13,584 cases, and 106 confirmed deaths on its hands, many of them in Moscow.

Yesterday, the New York Times published a story about the increasingly dire situation in the country. Hospitalizations related to COVID-19 in Moscow alone have doubled in the past week to 3,000, and that number continues to rapidly rise.

Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, sounded a further alarm, saying that the virus “is gaining momentum” and that “the situation is becoming increasingly problematic.”

The latest numbers show a troubling spike in new cases that is making some local officials fear Russia might be heading down the same path as Italy and Spain.

The capital city’s ambulance service and hospitals have been “stretched to the limit,” according to one Moscow health official. And if the world had any doubts about just how bad things are getting, they need only watch this clip of the line of ambulances waiting to drop patients (presumably mostly COVID-19 related) off at a hospital in Moscow.

The line appears to include dozens of ambulances potentially the majority running inside the city.

Line of ambulances at the hospital in Moscow. Wow https://t.co/Bx8QiOOxag

— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) April 11, 2020

Moscow alone reported 1,124 new cases of confirmed coronavirus infections on Friday, bringing the city-wide total to 7,822, Moscow accounts for 2/3rds of Russia’s cases.