A Russian coronavirus nurse has been verbally reprimanded for wearing a bikini beneath a see-through protective gown while tending to patients, local press reported Tuesday.
The nurse from the Tula region south of Moscow gained instant internet fame after a photo showing her making the rounds in the provocative garb with an elderly patient looking on in the background went viral in less than 24 hours.
Local news outlets reported that she had put on a bikini under her gown because “it gets too hot in the protective equipment [for clothes].” The government-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper reported that the unnamed nurse works in the district hospital’s red zone for coronavirus patients.
“The men in the ward had nothing against the medic’s outfit,” the Newstula.ru website reported, citing an unnamed person who shared the photo.
Still, the Tula region’s health department “took disciplinary action in the form of a reprimand” against the nurse “for violating the dress code,” the outlet reported later that day.
Authorities also held an “explanatory conversation” with her colleagues on requirements for sanitary clothing and outer appearance and stepped up controls over staffers responsible for PPE.
Meanwhile, activist doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva accused the nurse’s employers of issuing low-quality PPE to medics.
“You can see in the picture she was wearing some kind of plastic suit,” the Daily Storm news outlet quoted Vasilyeva as saying. “An anti-plague suit shouldn’t be transparent and must be made of a completely different fabric.”