Health Minister Arsen Torosyan said Wednesday, August 12 that around 300 coronavirus patients in Armenia are in a serious or critical condition.

Torosyan said this number is slow to decrease as a lot of patients spend a long time in intensive care units.

According to the Health Minister, hospitals are becoming less and less crowded, more beds becoming vacant with the decrease in the number of new infections.

Torosyan said it will be hard to eliminate any new cases in the near future, but keeping the number of infections as low as 50-100 each day should be acceptable.

Also Wednesday, the country decided to open its borders to non-citizens, despite extending the state of emergency for the last time until September 11.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Armenia reached 40,794 on Wednesday, according to information provided by the Health Ministry. So far, 33,492 people have recovered, 806 have died from the coronavirus in the country, while 234 others carrying the virus have died from other causes.