A 90-year-old Russian woman has cut cancer tumours out of her own stomach with a kitchen knife after a surgical operation was delayed because she contracted coronavirus.

Claudia Vasilievna Petrova was found alive by her daughter in Vyborg, which is a town in north-western Russia’s Leningrad Oblast region, but she died three weeks later in hospital.

Petrova was due to go into hospital to have an operation on her stomach after doctors detected level-four metastases in her abdominal cavity.

But the operation was delayed because she got COVID-19. Eventually, Petrova could no longer tolerate the accumulation of fluid in her abdominal cavity and she decided to operate on herself.

One day, she waited for her relatives to leave before cutting into her own stomach, having left a ‘suicide note’ in case the amateur surgery went wrong.

The note read: “Dear and beloved daughter and my beloved grandchildren! If you can, forgive me for doing this, but I cannot live with this disease. It hurts me a lot and it is hard…

“Kisses to all of you, your granny.”

The OAP’s granddaughter, named Yanina, is quoted in local media as saying: “When mum came home, my grandmother was lying on her back, although earlier, on her back, she could not breathe.

“Water was leaking from her abdominal cavity. Mum was shocked, my grandmother had made several cuts herself with a kitchen knife without us.

“My grandmother screamed, cried, blamed herself. She was bleeding, but not much.”

Relatives called an ambulance and Petrova was taken to hospital where doctors confirmed that she had coronavirus, although she was originally asymptomatic.

She died three weeks after being admitted to hospital. An official reason has yet to be made available but initial data indicates that the woman died of cancer, according to local media.