More Covid Deaths than Ever Before Registered in Russian Capitals Today

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 27 – Both Moscow and St. Petersburg suffered more coronavirus deaths today than they have on any previous day during the entire pandemic, with each city losing more than 100 lives, a sign that the rising tide of infections is leading to more hospitalizations and higher mortality rates (regnum.ru/news/3306583.html and regnum.ru/news/3306544.html).

            Today, for the fourth day in a row, Russian officials reported registering more than 20,000 new cases of infection, with 599 deaths overall, suggesting that Russia will face more demands on its already overloaded medical service sector and more deaths as well (t.me/COVID2019_official/3159 and sobkorr.org/news/60D8414F42860.html).

            Perhaps of equal concern to the Kremlin is that Russian resistance to vaccinations means not only that these numbers will continue to climb but that the Russian economy can’t reopen. In the US, where roughly half of all adults have been vaccinated, the economy is recovering. In Russia, where only 11 percent are fully vaccinated, it is still frozen in place.

            As Novaya gazeta put it in reporting this comparison, that is “the price of the distrust” Russians have for their government and its works and the benefit Western countries have because citizens distrust their governments far less (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/06/27/tsena-nedoveriia).

            The mounting toll in the capitals and in Buryatia is attracting the most attention in the former case because of the centralized perceptual map Russians have and in the latter because each day brings fresh evidence of disaster, but the pandemic is hitting other regions hard as well (regnum.ru/news/society/3301374.html, regnum.ru/news/3306479.html and nakanune.ru/news/2021/6/27/22607329/).

            Because some regions are tightening restrictions more than others, Russians are changing their vacation plans with those regions which have adopted the tightest measures losing many potential visitors to other regions which have adopted more “visitor friendly” policies. That may cause some regions to go slow in restrictions lest they lose out (vz.ru/economy/2021/6/27/1105887.html).

            Vladimir Putin has directed that all foreigners and people without citizenship coming into the Russian Federation to work must be vaccinated (regnum.ru/news/3306553.html). But opposition to the vaccinations continues to spread, with a protest against the shots taking place today in Krasnodar (kavkazr.com/a/31328630.html).

            Russian medical experts say the situation in the country is deteriorating rapidly because people aren’t getting the vaccinations in sufficient number at a time when the virus itself is mutating making vaccines less effective than they had been against strains that they were prepared to fight (aif.ru/health/coronavirus/gincburg_pri_novyh_mutaciyah_covid-19_vakcinu_mozhno_izmenit_za_nedelyu and lenta.ru/articles/2021/06/28/virus/).