Before meeting with Putin, students spent a week in quarantine

Students who came on Wednesday to meet with Putin went through a week-long quarantine before talking to the president. Two of them told the Agency about this.

Quote. “We had a week-long quarantine – after all, the president. Well, I must say, they served the highest level: they fed, watered, they answered any, so to speak, our whims. They took PCR tests, of course. They also donated blood twice for antibodies, as I understand it, this is also important. These are the security measures,” Petr Ptushkin, a freshman at the Moscow Polytechnic University, told the Agency.

• According to Ptushkin, they spent the quarantine at the President Hotel, located in the very center of Moscow near Gorky Park. The price of a standard single room in it starts from 4.6 thousand rubles per night.
• Another participant in the meeting, Natalya Gorbunova, confirmed to the Agency that “there were, of course, preparatory measures”: “We spent a little more than a week in the “clean zone” - the so-called observation. We were also gathered in zoom to discuss the meeting, getting to know each other, since it was impossible in person.” During the quarantine, according to Gorbunova, it was impossible to leave the hotel room. She also had PCR tests and an antibody test.
• However, another participant in the meeting, a student of the North Caucasian Federal University, Anastasia Podgornaya, told the Agency that she had not been in quarantine and had not taken PCR tests.

Context. After the start of the pandemic, Putin limited his social circle. Those who met him spent up to two weeks in quarantine. In December, when coronavirus restrictions had already been lifted in most countries, the practice of quarantines before meeting with the president continued, according to a report by Kommersant journalist Andrei Kolesnikov.

• Such precautions may be related to the increased attention the president has taken to his health in recent years. The Project reported that Putin uses the services of at least 60 doctors. On each trip, he is accompanied by an average of nine. The president's most frequent companions are ENT Alexei Shcheglov and surgeon Yevgeny Selivanov, author of a dissertation on the treatment of thyroid cancer.