Petersburg Officials Stop Issuing Covid Data They Say Media are Misusing

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 13 – St. Petersburg, one of the recent hotspots as far as the coronavirus is concerned and noted up to now for the amount of data it has provided the public about the pandemic, says that it will restrict its reporting because the media are misusing the data to portray the situation as worse than it is (rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/60ec93899a79471231841eff).

            Russian officials reported registering 24,702 cases of infection and 780 new deaths from the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, the former a slight decline from recent days, the latter a new pandemic-high (t.me/COVID2019_official/3283). Elsewhere infections were up generally (kommersant.ru/doc/4898929). And Moscow reported 16,271 deaths for the month of June (regnum.ru/news/3321004.html).

            The situation is so dire in Tyva that officials there have stopped all marriage ceremonies and public transport in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease (znak.com/2021-07-13/vlasti_tuvy_zapretili_zaklyuchat_braki_i_ostanovili_obchestvennyy_transport_iz_za_covid_19).

            On the vaccine front, officials reported that 28.8 million Russians have now been vaccinated (regnum.ru/news/3320667.html), that Moscow has begun to vaccinate foreign workers (regnum.ru/news/3320810.html), and that 71 percent of Moscow city officials have now had their shots (icmos.ru/news/rakova-71-gossluzhashchikh-pravitelstva-moskvy-proshli-vaktsinatsiyu-ot-covid-19).

            The Russian military has now given booster shots to more than 13,000 personnel (regnum.ru/news/3321191.html). But several regions report that they have run out of the vaccine and have had to suspend the vaccination programs (regnum.ru/news/3320104.html and regnum.ru/news/3320177.html).

            A Chinese pharmaceutical firm is seeking a license to sell its covid vaccine in Russia, and trade union officials are calling for a national decision on compulsory vaccination (regnum.ru/news/3320397.html and regnum.ru/news/3320514.html).

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

·         Superjob reports that 11 percent of all Russian citizens have been turned away from their workplaces because they do not yet have vaccinations (regnum.ru/news/3320273.html).

·         Omsk officials are confronted with a situation in which most residents are simply ignoring the mask mandate there (regnum.ru/news/3320595.html).

·         Russia’s human rights ombudsman reports that so far in 2021, there have been 3239 complaints about violations of rights among Russians because of the pandemic (regnum.ru/news/3320839.html).

·         The pandemic in the Moscow region is forcing all Kurban Bayram celebrations to shift to an online format (regnum.ru/news/3321007.html).

·         Novosibirsk residents say that in the wake of the pandemic, many more of them would prefer to live outside the city (regnum.ru/news/3321095.html).