New Coronavirus Spike Filling Up Emergency Rooms, Morgues in Russia, News Agency Says

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 3 – In many places, the new upsurge in coronavirus cases is filling up hospital emergency facilities as well as morgues, according to the independent Meduza news agency, the kind of report that is leading some to self-isolate and others to fear that the authorities will soon impose a new lockdown (meduza.io/feature/2020/10/02/reanimatsii-polnye-morg-polnyy and meduza.io/feature/2020/10/03/v-rossii-rezko-rastet-zabolevaemost-kovidom-meduza-vyyasnila-chto-ob-etom-dumayut-vlasti-i-vvedenie-kakih-ogranicheniy-obsuzhdayut-v-merii-moskvy-i-kremle).

            Ever more institutions including higher educational ones and schools are going over to distance operations, and more hospitals are opening special facilities for coronavirus treatments, even as the central Russian government denies that it is planning to take any draconian actions lest it send the economy into a deeper recession.

            Consequently, tensions are rising as the epidemic ebbs and flows across the country (regnum.ru/news/society/3077734.html, regnum.ru/news/3080858.html, regnum.ru/news/3080765.html, regnum.ru/news/3080755.html, regnum.ru/news/3080718.html, regnum.ru/news/3080699.html, regnum.ru/news/3080618.html and ng.ru/news/691489.html).

            Adding to concerns are debates among experts over whether Russia has entered a second phase of the pandemic or not and whether it will be worse or less bad than the first one last spring (rbc.ru/society/03/10/2020/5e2fe9459a79479d102bada6) and new programs designed to help the population but which in fact call attention to the problem.

            For example, in Moscow, medical facilities are handling out free medicines and equipment to those who may be suffering from the coronavirus (regnum.ru/news/3080706.html) and providing tests for flu and the coronavirus at the same time (regnum.ru/news/3080704.html). Other, less wealthy jurisdictions, of course, won’t be able to do that.

            For Russia as a whole, officials registered 9859 new cases of infection and 174 new deaths over the last 24 hours, bringing the totals in those two categories respectively to 1,204,502 and 21,25 1 (t.me/COVID2019_official/1639). Moscow city continued to spike with the highest number (2884) of infections since May 23 (regnum.ru/news/3080811.html).

            Officials are still pressing Russians to wear masks even as they assure them that the Russian Sputnik 5 vaccine is effective and even as some politicians say that the vaccine will save everyone making all other defensive steps unnecessary (regnum.ru/news/3080834.html, regnum.ru/news/3080689.html and regnum.ru/news/3080678.html).

            And to top it off, there was more bad economic news: Experts say that low oil prices and consequently the earnings of the Russian government are going to be depressed not for months but for years (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/80486).