Russians go back to work but virus cases, deaths stay high

MOSCOW – Russians went backmost to enactment connected Monday aft a nine-day hiatus ordered by the authorities to tame a record-breaking surge of coronavirus infections and deaths.

Despite the drastic move, the regular tallies of caller cases and COVID-19 deaths remained precocious passim the non-working period. Officials successful the Kremlin argued Monday that it was excessively aboriginal to archer whether the measurement had the desired effect.

“Too aboriginal to gully a conclusion. It volition beryllium wide successful astir a week,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Russia's coronavirus task unit reported 39,400 caller infections and 1,190 deaths connected Monday — numbers lone somewhat little than the grounds 41,335 caller cases registered connected Saturday and the grounds 1,195 deaths reported connected Thursday. Russia has the worst decease toll successful Europe by far, and is 1 of the apical 5 hardest-hit nations successful the world.

The task unit has been reporting astir 40,000 caller cases and implicit 1,100 caller deaths each time since precocious October.

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Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered galore Russians to enactment disconnected enactment betwixt Oct. 30 and Nov. 7. He authorized determination governments to widen the fig of non-working days, if necessary, but lone 5 Russian regions person done so.

Others person restricted attendance to nationalist places, specified arsenic restaurants, theaters and cinemas, to those who either person been afloat vaccinated, person recovered from COVID-19 wrong the past six months oregon tested antagonistic successful the erstwhile 72 hours.

Russia’s autumn surge successful infections and deaths comes amid debased vaccination rates, lax nationalist attitudes toward taking precautions and the government’s reluctance to toughen restrictions.

Less than 40% of Russia’s astir 146 cardinal radical person been afloat vaccinated, adjacent though Russia approved a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine months earlier astir countries.

In all, Russia’s coronavirus task unit has reported much than 8.8 cardinal confirmed cases and implicit 248,000 deaths.

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However, reports by Russia’s statistical work Rosstat that tally coronavirus-linked deaths retroactively uncover overmuch higher mortality numbers: 462,000 radical with COVID-19 died betwixt April 2020 and September this year.

Russian officials person said the task unit lone includes deaths for which COVID-19 was the main origin and uses information from aesculapian facilities. Rosstat uses wider criteria for counting virus-related deaths and takes its numbers from civilian registry offices wherever registering a decease is finalized.

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