OREANDA-NEWSRussia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Venezuela sent a joint letter on Wednesday to UN Secretary General Antoni Gutterrish urging several other countries to lift unilateral sanctions that impede national efforts to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.

The text of the letter is published on the official page of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations on Twitter. “We can't allow political accounts to stand in the way of saving lives. It's time for global solidarity”, the Permanent Mission said. Earlier, the UN Secretary General called on the G20 countries to lift the sanctions against other countries to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The outbreak caused by the new coronavirus disease was recorded at the end of 2019 in Central China, later spreading to more than 150 countries and was recognized by the World Health Organization as a pandemic. According to the latest data, more than 450 thousand people were infected in the world, more than 21 thousand deaths were recorded.