At a special sitting of the National Assembly, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan outlined the reasons for not declaring a state of emergency earlier.

“There is a simple statistic. The number of our compatriots infected with coronavirus has grown more than fivefold in the last 4 days. On the 11th March we had about 6 or 7 patients, this dynamic made us think that usual remedies do not stop the process. In the last 2 days we have had 4 or 5 diagnoses per day. Law enforcement agencies with the Ministry of Health have identified those men. I do understand that you hide when you are in the pursuit but it is hard to understand that you are ill and hide from everyone, including doctors, it is really difficult to understand. Today, 128 citizens had temperature, whom we asked to go home. But the man says, ‘No, I’m not going back, I’m not going back.’ Or there is a man who filled in the form, was explained what he should do. When he was called and asked how he felt, he said that he had no problems. However to the knock at the door he said from behind of the door, everything is ‘OK’. When asked to open the door so that we could see that everything is ‘OK’, he refused to open it. In these cases, the state must have a lever to say you should open, or we shall break the door and enter. Now there is a danger that the scale may change, that is why the state needs levers.”

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