COVID-19: Montenegrin Medical Staffer Detained Over Publication Of Patient Data

The global death toll from the coronavirus is more than 88,000 with more than 1.5 million infections confirmed, causing mass disruptions as governments continue to try to slow the spread of the new respiratory illness.

Here’s a roundup of COVID-19 developments in RFE/RL’s broadcast regions.

Montenegro

Authorities in Montenegro have detained a medical staffer accused of publishing a list of the names of people infected with the novel coronavirus.

Prosecutors said on April 8 the man had been ordered detained for up to 72 hours pending further investigation into the case.

The suspect, identified only by the initials M.R., is a staffer of the IT department at the Health Center in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica.

He was detained late on April 7 for the alleged unauthorized collection and usage of personal information.

He is accused of sharing data on COVID-19 patients with other people who are not authorized to handle the information.

A list of at least 60 names of people infected with the virus, along with their socal ID numbers and birth year, has been distributed on social networks since April 3.

The government ordered an investigation, saying that publishing the names of infected patients “violates basic human rights.”

Civil society organizations and opposition parties have also condemned the publication of the list.

There have been 248 confirmed coronavirus cases in the Adriatic country of some 630,000 people so far, two of whom have died.

Russia

A curfew for children and the elderly has been introduced in Russia’s Bashkortostan region to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The head of Bashkortostan, Rady Khabirov, said on April 9 that the curfew for citizens 65 years of age and older started at 6 p.m. local time and runs until 10 a.m. For children, the curfew is from 6 p.m. to 1 p.m., he added.

Khabirov also confirmed reports saying that the largest hospital in Bashkortostan’s capital, Ufa, had seen a rise of cases attributed to “pneumonia” in the past two weeks.

Rimma Kamalova of Ufa’s Kuvatov Republican Clinical Hospital’s rheumatology department told RFE/RL on April 8 that the flow of patients with pneumonia symptoms was “simply enormous.”

Khabirov said that some 500 people had been tested for coronavirus, though there were no official results yet.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, sources at the hospital in Ufa told RFE/RL that more that 60 tests came back as positive for the coronavirus on April 8.

Also on April 9, authorities in Bashkortostan introduced a system requiring individuals to obtain electronic permission to use personal cars for trips during the lockdown.

Permission to use a car for one trip up to 90 minutes long per day can be obtained through registration at a government website.

With reporting by RFE/RL’s Balkan and Tatar-Bashkir services