He says seven colleagues in his town have now died, including nurses, orderlies and laboratory staff, according to a count kept by local medics themselves.
"All three doctors on my team got sick. We were replaced by dentists until we recovered," Dr Yevtemirov told the BBC
and
The minister told a blogger that 40 medics had died in the republic: more than the total, official number of Covid-19 fatalities.
The story of one village is encouraging.
The village of Gurbuki was better served than others to cope.
A brand new hospital was opened in December to great fanfare. But when in April suspected Covid-19 cases began filling up beds, a staggering 50% of medical personnel fell ill.
Locals didn't wait for government help to take action.
Volunteers, mainly young men, began helping out on the wards; others stepped in to set up checkpoints at the village entrance to try to control the infection's spread.
And when the hospital began running dangerously low on oxygen, it was volunteers who travelled the 120km (75-mile) round trip to the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala, to refill all the gas canisters they'd begged and borrowed off villagers.
The worst seems to be over, but Eid is coming up.
People have been crowding local markets, he says, despite imams sending WhatsApp warnings not to lay on food to share with neighbours.
"I think they'll gather together less, but it won't stop totally," the doctor worries, ahead of another shift on the Covid ward. "People are a little bit undisciplined.
"Locals didn't wait for government help to take action." I'll bet nobody had authorization for any of that. Perhaps "undisciplined" can be a good thing sometimes.
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