UPDATED:

 12:46, 2 March, 2020

YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. 9 suspected cases of the novel coronavirus are currently being tested, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the governmental task force meeting on prevention of the disease.

“We will inform the public as soon as the results are available. We hope the cases won’t be confirmed, but if God forbids they are confirmed we will inform about it. If the cases are confirmed, it shouldn’t be an occasion for panic, because let’s note that this is a surmountable disease,” Pashinyan said.

He said that after the first confirmed case in Armenia on March 1, several suspected cases have been tested and came back negative.

Pashinyan emphasized that the first confirmed patient is doing well and doesn’t even require medical intervention.

“He had fever, and then the fever subsided on its own, now the man is simply watching television at the isolation ward in the hospital,” he said, adding that all the direct contacts of the patient who have been quarantined are also doing well and have no symptoms so far. “Yesterday we had a couple of suspected cases, but all tested negative”, he said.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan

UPDATES: 

18:28 – All nine suspected cases test negative for the virus.