Sunday, March 7, 2021

Putin Aide Infected with Coronavirus but Kremlin Leader Won’t Isolate and Hasn’t Been Vaccinated

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 6 – Maksim Oreshkin, an aide to Vladimir Putin, has been diagnosed as having been infected with the coronavirus; but the Kremlin leader himself does not plan to self-isolate, his press spokesman says, even though there has not yet been any announcement that the president has gotten vaccinated (regnum.ru/news/3208542.html).

            Russian officials reported that they had registered 11,022 new cases of infection and 441 deaths from the pandemic over the last 24 hours, as more regions reported improvements and either lifted restrictions or promised to do so soon (t.me/COVID2019_official/2558, regnum.ru/news/society/3202625.html and regnum.ru/news/3208463.html).

            The RBC news agency released its own numbers on how many Russians have been vaccinated. According to its figures, more than 4.7 million Russians have received at least one shot, and a minimum of 1.62 million have received both. The totals are certainly higher as 13 federal subjects did not provide data (rbc.ru/society/06/03/2021/602fd21f9a794703abc0d981).

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

·         The defense ministry reported that as of March 5, more than 40,000 uniformed personnel in the Central Military District have received complete vaccination against the coronavirus (regnum.ru/news/3208439.html).

·         In response to media reports that the Russian government may again raise the pension age, economist Yevgeny Gontmakher said that doing so during the pandemic would be “suicidal” for the powers that be (echo.msk.ru/news/2801048-echo.html).

·         Russian doctors are now saying that some Russians may have to get a third shot of the vaccine because their bodies have failed to develop enough antibodies after the scheduled two (ura.news/news/1052474772).

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