Thus, the COVID-19 epidemic in Russia was not officially declared and could not be declared.
At the same time, if there is no epidemic, then there is no pandemic, since the pandemic is, as stated in the last letter, the greatest intensity of the epidemic process. A pandemic without an epidemic.
Term “pandemic” does not exist in the Russian legislation at all, and it is illegal to use as a regime for restriction of rights, and there are other concepts in the laws to determine the spread of infectious diseases including the concept of “epidemic”. According to the norms of the administrative law, authorities are endowed with quite definite powers, beyond which they cannot go, which means that they are not entitled to use in their work terms that define the most important social processes that are not contained in the laws and in their competence, especially, in the presence of a legal analogue, since this means going beyond the limits of existing powers, that is, the excess of powers.
No authority in Russia has the right to declare a pandemic. It is illegal. Nobody announced it, but the term was used every day in all mass media and on the websites of the authorities, creating a total panic.
Term “pandemic” existed in the documents of the World Health Organization until 2010, and in 2009 a swine flu pandemic was declared, but later, exactly because of the criticism, in particular, by PACE, this term was excluded from the WHO regulations and could no longer be legally used.
However, on March 11, 2020, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, stated that the situation with the spread of COVID-19 might be described as a pandemic[4].
At the same time, no information was reported who and how made the decision that it was a pandemic. Declaring the outbreak of COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) which was made by the WHO on January 30, 2020 is a sufficient and legitimate response by WHO to the threatening spread of the disease in accordance with WHO regulations, but does not mean at all the recognition of this PHEIC as a pandemic.
By declaring a pandemic and supporting it subsequently, the WHO Director General has gone beyond the existing rules and competences.
The All-Russian Public Organization “League of Patient Defenders” sent an inquiry to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, from which a response was received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation No. Director General of WHO that the concept of “pandemic” in the legal environment is absent and there is no procedure for its announcement.
Declaring a pandemic and supporting it subsequently, the WHO Director General has gone beyond the existing rules and competences.
The All-Russian public organization “League of Patient Defenders” sent an inquiry to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation which sent back response №11374/dmo dated 28.09.2021[5] which states that COVID-19 pandemic was declared unofficially, the WHO Director-General having no authorities for that, concept “pandemic does not exist in the legal environment, and there is no procedure for its announcement.
The letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation clearly states: “There is no definition of this concept agreed upon at the level of the WHO governing bodies ... Unlike the announcement of PHEIC regime, the introduction of term “pandemic” from a legal point of view is not regulated and does not imply the adoption of additional special response measures”.
It should be taken into account that the opinion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation laid down in the letter that “The statement made by WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom on March 11, 2020 that the spread of COVID-19 acquired the character of a pandemic was aimed at drawing the attention of the political leadership of countries-members to the problem (in his speech, Tedros Adhanom emphasized serious concern about the rapid spread of the infection and the alarming level of inaction, ”is of not a legal nature and is aimed at an attempt to justify the illegal actions not only of the WHO, but also of officials in Russia who followed the illegal instructions of the WHO to promote “pandemic”, including the actions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, on the website of which word “pandemic” is also mentioned for many times (a search on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry shows 1780 mentions).
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Interview of Director of the First European Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia A.V. Paramonov to international information agency “Russia Today”, March 19, 2022