Paul Goble
Staunton, April 9 – Alla Ilina, a St. Petersburg resident, has become the first person to bring a suit concerning the coronavirus quarantine requirements the Russian government imposed to the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, her lawyer says (kommersant.ru/doc/4763131).
Today, the Russian government said it had registered 9150 new cases of infection and 402 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, as the disease mostly ebbed but in a few places spiked over the last 24 hours (t.me/COVID2019_official/2747 and regnum.ru/news/society/3233862.html).
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said Moscow must take measures to prevent a new spike after the May holidays and that it must ensure that none of the new strains of the coronavirus which have appeared abroad enter Russia (regnum.ru/news/3239196.html and regnum.ru/news/3239159.html).
But Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko said that Russia because of government policies would be able to dispense with pandemic restrictions far sooner than most other countries (regnum.ru/news/3238279.html). Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says large Russian cities already have close to herd immunity levels (regnum.ru/news/3238829.html).
On the vaccine front, the Russian government says that the tempo of vaccinations among those over 60 must be increased since less that 50 percent of Russians in that age cohort have received their shots (mk.ru/politics/2021/04/09/koronavirus-kreml-dal-prikaz-vlast-reshilas-vakcinirovat-pozhilykh-doma.html and regnum.ru/news/3238992.html).
Moscow has sent St. Petersburg nearly 600,000 doses of the vaccine and the city has administered all by 77,000 of them (regnum.ru/news/3239283.html). But Moscow has sent other regions less and some won’t reach herd immunity for at least three years (business-gazeta.ru/article/505343).
Putin spoke with his Turkish counterpart about the use in Turkey of the Russian vaccine, a highly sensitive issue given that Russians often go to Turkey for vacations but are being discouraged from doing so this year (regnum.ru/news/3239159.html).
Also today, the developers of Sputnik-5 acknowledged that it was less effective against the South African strain than they had suggested earlier (echo.msk.ru/news/2819048-echo.html), and the health ministry cleared another vaccine for clinical trials (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=606FF3A415BDE).
Gamaley Labs expressed the hope that no one would need booster shots after receiving initial vaccination with the Sputnik-5 medication (regnum.ru/news/3238671.html). But Russian officials complained loudly that the West had unleashed “a dirty game” against the Sputnik-5 vaccine in order to gain market share (meduza.io/news/2021/04/09/drugim-stranam-bolshe-dostanetsya-kreml-ob-otkaze-slovakii-zaregistrirovat-sputnik-v).
Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments in Russia today,
· Gamaley Laboratory director Aleksandr Gintsburg said that there is a high degree of probability that Russia will need to vaccinate all animals and not just people (regnum.ru/news/3238653.html).
· Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko says that Russia must enshrine in law all the lessons learned from the pandemic (pnp.ru/in-world/uroki-pandemii-nado-perevesti-na-yazyk-pravovykh-aktov.html).
· Moscow is taking great pride t that San Marino will be the first country in the world to have 100 percent of its residents vaccinated with Sputnik-5 (stoletie.ru/lenta/naselenije_san-marino_budet_polnostju_vakcinirovano_sputnikom_v_845.htm).
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