OREANDA-NEWS. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that in the pandemic of the new coronavirus “the disease takes half,” and the rest is nothing but politics.

“I am still adhering to a principle that it is more than a disease. The disease takes half, maybe less. Everything else is politics,” the Belarusian leader said, speaking to the staff of the Minsk Tractor Plant. His words are quoted by the presidential press service.

On March 11, the World Health Organization announced an outbreak of a new coronavirus infection with COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, almost 5.6 million cases of the disease were registered in the world, more than 350 thousand people died. Many countries have introduced quarantine restrictions on the movement of citizens and the entry of foreigners to limit the spread of infection. Belarus rejected to impose such measures, just identifying and isolating infected people and their contacts. In Belarus, 39,858 cases of infection with coronavirus were detected, 219 people died.