Number of Russians Getting Vaccinated Each Day Falls by Almost Two-Thirds Since July

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 13 – The Russian government does not release all-Russian figures on vaccinations, but the Gogov.ru portal sums up reports from the regions which do. It says that at present some 235,000 Russians are getting their shots each day, down from 600,000 daily in early July (gogov.ru/articles/covid-v-stats).

            On the one hand, this reflects a decline in the share of Russians who say they are ready to get the shots but have not received them; but on the other, it means that those who did not want to get the shots earlier have not had their minds changed either by rising death tolls or government propaganda efforts.

            Today, Russian officials reported registering 22,277 new cases of infection and 815 new deaths from the coronavirus over the last 24 hours, the former a decline but the latter a new pandemic-era record for the second day in a row (t.me/stopcoronavirusrussia/5560) as the pandemic continued to ebb and flow across the country (regnum.ru/news/society/3337040.html).

            Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that conditions in his city are allowing him to lift most but now all restrictions, even though his health department reported that the city had suffered 6464 more deaths this July than it did a year earlier (sobyanin.ru/vozvraschenie-k-normalnoi-zhizni-resheniya-13-08-21 and mosgorzdrav.ru/ru-RU/news/default/card/5895.html).

            Sobyanin took particular pride in the fact that the number of new hospitalizations has fallen by 50 percent from its peak in July and that some 4.5 million of the city’s residents have been vaccinated. He has loosened restrictions on businesses and schools but not ended the public mask requirement that annoys many.

            Elsewhere in the Russian Federation, the situation is not as good. In Chuvashia, for example, officials are warning that the epidemiological situation remains so serious that it is affecting the ability of candidates for the upcoming elections to campaign (regnum.ru/news/3343746.html).

            On the vaccine front, observers reported that anti-vaxxers are especially prevalent among KPRF voters (rbc.ru/politics/13/08/2021/611517489a7947efb34f7266), and 84 percent of Russians favor offering covid vaccines to immigrants for free (nazaccent.ru/content/36375-opros-84-rossiyan-vystupili-za-besplatnuyu.html).

            And a close examination of the health ministry’s latest release of data finds that the healthcare system in Russia is in a state of “systemic crisis” and thus has proved incapable of protecting Russians during the pandemic (akcent.site/mneniya/15384).