Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 10 – Because Russians
must provide certification they are free of the coronavirus to get certain jobs
or to travel, a new underground industry has arisen to provide them with what
they need: Underground websites are now selling fake diagnoses for 2500 rubles
(35 US dollars) (dailystorm.ru/rassledovaniya/v-moskve-bolnye-covid-19-mogut-poluchit-spravku-s-otricatelnym-rezultatom-na-koronavirus-za-2500-rubley).
Such diagnoses may introduce still
more errors in Russian figures on the coronavirus pandemic. But they are far
from alone: Moscow is changing the rules on diagnosis of those with flu if they
submit negative test results for the virus (regnum.ru/news/3059714.html),
and doctors have been told not to count certain cases as coronavirus-related
because of problems with testing (regnum.ru/news/3059727.html).
But officials continue to release
daily numbers. Today, Moscow said there had been 5363 new cases of infection,
bringing the cumulative total to 1,046,370 and 128 new deaths, upping that toll
to 18, 263 (regnum.ru/news/3059253.html
and regnum.ru/news/3059172.html).
But officials in Daghestan acknowledged that their statistics are incomplete (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/354013/).
Possibly to help overcome popular
resistance to getting the Russian vaccine, the Russian health ministry has
suggested requiring that those who want to travel abroad have it, opening the
way for new fraud if those selling certifications of one kind will likely sell
certifications of another (regnum.ru/news/3059883.html).
The pandemic continued to ebb and
flow across Russia, with some re-openings and some new closures (regnum.ru/news/society/3057754.html).
The Kremlin insisted that reopening had not led to new spikes (znak.com/2020-09-10/kreml_otkrytie_rossiyskogo_yuga_ne_privelo_k_vsplesku_sluchaev_zabolevaniya_covid_19),
but health officials reported they were occurring in 11 regions (tass.ru/obschestvo/9420077).
Doctors
said this was no surprise because of the reopening of schools, and they
suggested that by mid-September, a second wave of the pandemic will spread
across the Russian Federation (ura.news/news/1052449150
and regnum.ru/news/3059347.html).
They also said that even with the vaccine, Russia won’t achieve herd immunity
until a year from now (regnum.ru/news/3059640.html).
Vladimir Putin said that the impact
of the pandemic on the Russian economy was less than on those of other leading
countries (regnum.ru/news/3059516.html).
Experts pointed out, on the basis of Rosstat data, this is because the Russian has
fewer small firms and a less developed service sector (rbc.ru/economics/09/09/2020/5f58e8699a794783405417fc?from=column_25).
But the impact on Russia’s export of
oil, something on which Moscow has long relied, was enormous. Because of
falling demand and falling prices, Russia received 37.7 percent less from the sale
of oil abroad the first part of this year than during a comparable period in
2019 (sobkorr.org/news/5F59C75BA9CDF.html).
Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related
developments in Russia today,
·
Two
Orthodox training academies, one in St. Petersburg and one in Orenburg, have
imposed quarantines because of coronavirus infections (regnum.ru/news/3059339.html and credo.press/232932/).
·
The
Russian internet trade organization warns that there is no guarantee that
bricks and mortar stores won’t be shuttered again if the pandemic gets worse
later this year (ura.news/news/1052449037).
·
A
new survey finds Russians don’t trust their country’s healthcare system. A
major reason for that is the failure of medical officials to provide adequate
guidance to the population on what people should do if they think they have
been infected (newizv.ru/news/society/10-09-2020/dazhe-dengi-ne-pomogayut-pochemu-rossiyane-ne-doveryayut-sisteme-zdravoohraneniya
and https://gorod-812.ru/my-i-covid-19/).
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