All of Russia Now a Hotspot: Covid Infections Up in All but Three Federal Subjects

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 7 – Coronavirus infections are rising in 82 federal subjects out of the 85 as Moscow counts them by including occupied Crimea and Sevastopol, with infections up overall 17 percent over the last week and Russia’s death toll from the pandemic now totaling more than 140,000 (regnum.ru/news/3315879.html and regnum.ru/news/3315899.html).

Consequently, while some places are doing worse than the average – Daghestan, the Transbaikal, Buryatia and the two capitals in particular – it is no longer appropriate to speak of individual regions as hotspots because the entire country has been engulfed by the pandemic with increases everywhere not only in the number of infections but the number of deaths as well (regnum.ru/news/society/3315953.html and regnum.ru/news/society/3310819.html).

Today, Russian officials reported registering 23,962 new cases of infection and 725 deaths, the latter a high for the pandemic and representing a trend that many fear is not going to change for some time (t.me/COVID2019_official/3226).

The biggest controversy over the last 24 hours has been about the deeply unpopular QR codes required for entry into Moscow restaurants and cafes, the extension of these codes to museums, and fears that the authorities may soon add ordinary stores to the list. Officials deny that so far (regnum.ru/news/3315102.html, regnum.ru/news/3315265.html and regnum.ru/news/3315649.html).

On the vaccine front, 105,000 Muscovites were vaccinated today, bringing the all-Russia total to 18.5 million, about 13 percent of the population (regnum.ru/news/3315701.html and regnum.ru/news/3315869.html). Despite the push for vaccines, Russian production of medicines has fallen in real terms by 9.2 percent over the first five months of 2021 (vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2021/07/07/877302-proizvodstvo-lekarstv).

Other vaccine news included that Russia and China have come up with a common vaccine (sovsekretno.ru/news/knr-i-rossiya-sozdali-sovmestnuyu-vaktsinu-ot-covid-19/), the government has announced that it needs to achieve no less than 80 to 90 percent collective immunity (regnum.ru/news/3315535.html), and the Russian Orthodox Church reports a slowing of new infections and deaths among religious (regnum.ru/news/3315937.html).

On the economics front, statistics show that during the course of the pandemic in Russia, not only have the poor become poorer and many of the middle class fallen into that category but the rich have become richer and by much larger amounts (trtrussian.com/novosti-rossiya/dohody-bogatejshih-rossijskih-chinovnikov-vyrosli-v-pandemiyu-5979558).

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

Demographers say that the pandemic and its associated population losses will have a negative echo on the population for decades to come much as World War II still does (nakanune.ru/articles/117213/).

Some Russians are taking pride in the fact that the World Health Organization has now registered “a Russian strain” of the coronavirus (rosbalt.ru/world/2021/07/08/1910499.html).

Some Moscow analysts are speculating that the Kremlin may impose lockdowns in order to better control the results of the September parliamentary elections (iarex.ru/articles/81688.html).