Karelia Becomes First Region to Stop Publishing Daily Coronavirus Data

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 1 – The government of the Republic of Karelia says that it has achieved such success in the fight against the coronavirus that no useful purpose would be served by its continuing to publish daily data on infections, hospitalizations and deaths (regnum.ru/news/3285293.html).

            Other regions and republics are likely to follow suit, ending what has been a remarkable run of more than 16 months in which each of the federal subjects has published data, some of it reliable, some not, but always on a daily basis. If the publication of such data does end in wide swaths of Russia, it will be far more difficult to determine just what the real situation is.

            Today, Russian officials reported registering 9500 new cases of infection and 372 new deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours. The surge in new infections was concentrated in the two capitals and their adjoining regions, as the pandemic levelled out in most other parts of the country (t.me/COVID2019_official/3003, rosbalt.ru/russia/2021/06/01/1904359.html and   regnum.ru/news/society/3277253.html).

            There were two other Russian “coronavirus headline” stories. In the first, people planning to attend the Petersburg International Economic Forum stood in long lines to be tested for the coronavirus. That has been required to protect Vladimir Putin who is scheduled to speak to the group  (regnum.ru/news/3285095.html).

            And in the second, a London-based PR firm that had been putting out stories attacking Western vaccines was found to be a front for the Russian government by Deutsche Welle (trtrussian.com/novosti-mir/dw-rossiya-mozhet-vesti-fejkovuyu-kampaniyu-protiv-biontechpfizer-5624383).

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

·         Moscow officials say that the KoviVak vaccine will soon be available to residents of the capital (regnum.ru/news/3284913.html).

·         A group of Russian psychologists say that the quarantine as unpopular as it was nonetheless had the positive effect of exerting an “anti-aging” effect on those forced to remain in their homes (regnum.ru/news/3284697.html).

·         Russia faces a new problem: Some people who get the shots and then test to see how many antibodies they have are getting third, fourth or even more shots in order to boost their immunity, something that plays havoc with data about the number of Russians actually vaccinated (mk.ru/social/health/2021/06/01/okhotniki-za-antitelami-v-rossii-poshla-moda-na-mnogokratnuyu-vakcinaciyu.html).