Officially More than Six Million Russians have Been Infected with Coronavirus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 20 – Almost 24,000 Russians were registered as having been infected with the coronavirus over the last 24 hours according to Moscow officials, bringing the government’s total for the pandemic to 6,006,536, a figure analysts say understates the true numbers by a large amount (regnum.ru/news/3326392.html, стопкоронавирус.рф/information/ and zona.media/article/2021/07/20/29mln).

            The authorities also reported registering 23,770 deaths from the coronavirus over the last day, bringing the cumulative total to 154,000, yet another number that many analysts have suggested understates the reality (t.me/COVID2019_official/3325) especially as the pandemic spreads across the country (regnum.ru/news/society/3324376.html).

Many federal subjects imposed new restrictions including mandatory vaccinations for more groups, including journalists (natpressru.info/index.php?newsid=12514), and there were more calls for lockdowns as well especially given that resistance to inoculation shows no sign of easing and thus allowing an increase in the number of Russian vaccinated.

On the vaccine front, Moscow reported that 77 percent of officials have now been vaccinated, St. Petersburg reported that 1.2 million of its residents have received their shots, and the vice president of the social chamber in Leningrad Oblast called for introducing legal penalties for anyone urging others not to get vaccinated (regnum.ru/news/3326921.html, regnum.ru/news/3326112.html and regnum.ru/news/3326244.html).

And the health ministry, pushing for more Russians to get their shots, announced that only five percent of those who had been vaccinated landed in the hospital if they were in fact re-infected, as very few of them have been (capost.media/news/obshchestvo/minzdrav-rf-nazval-protsent-zarazhayutsya-koronavirusom-vaktsinirovannykh-ot-covid-19-grazhdan-/).

Meanwhile, in other pandemic-related developments in Russia today,

·         Church officials took down a video clip of the Ozersk bishop saying that the vaccination was harmful to anyone who received it (pravmir.ru/soloveczkij-monastyr-udalil-propoved-o-vrede-vakcziny-ot-koronavirusa/).

·         Russian doctors say they are confronting more cases of Long COVID, as the lasting effects of covid infections are known (sovsekretno.ru/articles/postkovid/).