Russia reported a new record for daily deaths from coronavirus on Wednesday, as the vaccination campaign progressed slowly and authorities were reluctant to tighten restrictions.
The government’s coronavirus team reported 984 deaths in the previous 24 hours, a new record. In recent weeks, the country has broken record after record for daily deaths amid a rebound in infections, which are close to the all-time high with 28,717 new cases confirmed on Wednesday.
The Kremlin has attributed the rising numbers of infections and deaths to the stagnant vaccination rate. Some 43 million Russians, or about 29% of the country’s nearly 146 million people, have completed their vaccination, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Tuesday.
President Vladimir Putin has stressed the need to speed up the vaccination rate, although he has also warned against forcing people to immunize with administrative pressure. Experts have attributed the slow pace of vaccination to widespread skepticism about vaccines and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
The Kremlin has ruled out a new national quarantine like the one imposed in the first months of the pandemic, which dealt a severe blow to the economy and affected Putin’s popularity. The government has delegated to regional authorities the powers to impose restrictions associated with the virus.
Some Russian regions have restricted the capacity of mass events and limited access to restaurants, theaters and other venues to vaccinated people, recently recovered from COVID-19 or with a negative test of the previous 72 hours.
However, life goes on almost as usual in Moscow, St. Petersburg and many other Russian cities, where companies operate normally and mask regulations are barely enforced. Moscow authorities expanded free coronavirus testing in shopping malls in the hope that it would help stop the infections.
The infections have increased the pressure on the Russian health system and hospitals are filling up quickly. Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said that 11% of the 235,000 hospitalized with COVID-19 are in serious or critical condition.
In total, the Russian coronavirus team has recorded more than 7.8 million confirmed cases and 219,329 deaths, the highest number in Europe. The state statistical agency Rosstat, which also counts deaths in which the virus was not considered the main cause, has reported a much higher number, about 418,000 deaths with COVID-19.
If that higher figure is taken into account, Russia would be the fourth country in the world most affected by the pandemic, after the United States, Brazil and India. Even with the lowest number, Russia would be the fifth country with the most deaths, behind Mexico.
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