The pace of spread of COVID-19 is increasing with absolute figures, but the percentage is the same. The numbers are increasing because the base is growing. This is what Minister of Health of Armenia Arsen Torosyan said during an interview on Azatutyun Radio, touching upon the growth of the number of coronavirus cases in Armenia over the past week.

Over the past week, Armenia has reported 407 new coronavirus cases, 253 patients have recovered, and 6 patients have died.

“Unfortunately, there is a diversity of hotbeds, meaning whereas in mid-March there were clearly one or two and then three hotbeds, after that, the spread of the virus was beyond those hotbeds, and now there are a dozen and sometimes even twenty hotbeds that aren’t linked to each other, and we can’t find the threads to link those hotbeds with the first ones. This is natural since there are many asymptomatic patients. The virus might have spread from a person who didn’t know that he or she had the virus,” he said.

According to Arsen Torosyan, the other “unfortunate direction” for the spread of the virus are medical centers. “We have currently concentrated our efforts to prevent the spread of the virus at medical centers and to protect doctors and patients with other diseases,” he said, adding that the growth of the number of cases is also due to more intraregional and intracity movement and more open businesses.