On 4 June, Armenia’s Health Minister Arsen Torosyan warned that Armenian hospitals may soon be unable to admit all infected people in need of urgent treatment. 

“On a daily basis, almost manually, so to speak, we accommodate patients in the existing hospital beds,” he said. “It is very important that we register a substantial decrease in [infection] numbers so that we can keep up … this process. Or else, it will be very difficult to ensure all that,” he added. Torosyan also noted that there is a dangerous trend when Covid-19 cases are recorded in industrial teams and that large outbreaks follow shortly afterwards.  

Torosyan was heavily criticized by the Bright Armenia opposition party, which said that the Armenian authorities had failed in the fight against the coronavirus. In response, Torosyan recalled that the Bright Armenia parliamentarians strongly opposed the extension of the state of emergency, the introduction of an IT system for detecting contact persons and wearing masks. He said that they demanded the resumption of transport, which is the most risky area, and of large enterprises with dozens virus carriers and questioned the appropriateness of quarantining people in hotels, which would only had made the pandemic in the country even worse than it is. He also said that for decades, the health system in Armenia was lacked proper financing, it received only 1.4% of Armenia's GDP, and was not sufficiently developed in material and technical terms. However, it still performed tenfold better then other financed sectors in the country.  

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also spoke publicly that  the healthcare system is already struggling to cope with the situation and outlined the main problems. “If, for example, there are thousands of patients, our healthcare system is able to serve these 25%, but when the total number of infected people exceeds 10,000, everything becomes very complicated. We have reached the point where our healthcare system is already struggling to cope,” he said. The main danger according to Pashinyan were asymptomatic patients. “We know for sure that in the country now there are from 20 to 30 thousand asymptomatic infected people who do not know about their infection but spread it. Such people are everywhere, so you need to treat everyone around as potentially infected and follow all the necessary protection rules,” Pashinyan added.

“I am arriving at the conclusion that there is no security or administrative body in the world that can solve the problem of such scale,” declared Pashinyan in a video address streamed live on Facebook. “This is not a merely organizational issue. Even if it is, no structure, not even the government, can solve this problem unless each of us views this problem as their own,” he added. 

At the following government session, Pashiynan and his political team considered a few scenarios of possible economic consequences to Armenia following the drastic rise of Covid-19 cases and the potential economic burden it may bring to the country. “During our discussion, we stated that, even based on our calculations, we might come to the conclusion that the economic burden will be intolerable, and we might have to seek another path. In any case, we are considering scenarios and will make a decision based on one of them,” Pashinyan stated. “One of those scenarios includes the possibility of addressing Armenia’s international partners with the request for support, which is currently necessary,” wrote on Facebook the spokesperson of Armenia’s Commandant for the state of emergency Vahan Hunanyan.

Following Hunayan’s statement, the United States allocated $5.4 million in fresh assistance to Armenia designed to combat the epidemic. The US ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy also voiced her concerns over the growing number of coronavirus cases in the country while praising the Armenian government’s intensifying efforts to get people to practice social distancing, wear face masks and wash hands.

“Obviously these high numbers that we are seeing now are of concern, but it’s really the effort of all of us, a unified effort, that I think is going to make a difference in fighting Covid-19. I am also happy to say that the United States has been doing its best to contribute and assist the government. We have obtained $5.4 million of new assistance money that’s going in a number of directions to help the government. We are also redirecting some of our existing money to help small and medium businesses,“ she said. “So, I still have some optimism that we can recover and be in a better place. But it’s going to take a lot of work, I think, from everybody,” she concluded.

On 4 June, 697 new cases were recorded, the largest number of new cases recorded in a single day for Armenia. In the past 24 hours, 596 new cases were recorded bringing the total tally to 11 817 cases and 183 reported deaths.