It floats like an air of déjà vu over Russia, where the fourth wave of Covid-19 furiously resembles its predecessors. Hospitals overwhelmed, contamination records broken day after day, deficient vaccination and public authorities relying on a solution that was believed to belong to the past: generalized confinement.
The measure was announced Thursday, October 21 by the city of Moscow, quickly imitated by several Russian regions. In the capital, this non-strict confinement will last from October 28 to November 7. All public services, non-essential businesses or restaurants will have to close their doors, and employees in the public and parapublic sectors will be paid unemployed. It is, according to the mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, “Break the chain of contamination as much as possible, in a minimum of time”.
Such a measure had not been taken since June. Official statistics, which have steadily worsened in recent weeks, have apparently been the trigger. On Thursday, the country broke again its record for contaminations and deaths with more than 36,000 new cases and 1,036 deaths in 24 hours. Hospital beds of all types are 87% full, according to the Ministry of Health.
Over 1,000 deaths per day
The mortality figures, counted according to a particularly restrictive method, are questionable, but they show a clear dynamic: the bar of the thousand daily deaths had never been crossed before the beginning of October.
Vladimir Putin spoke on the subject on Wednesday – for the first time since the summer, when he was pleased that Russia has come out of the pandemic better than the rest of the world. As throughout 2020, he indicated that he would leave it to the regions to make the trade-offs between health and the economy, while asking them to “Do not embellish the situation” giving truncated statistics.
Surprisingly, the measures announced leave a limited place to vaccination, offering very few benefits to those vaccinated. The health pass allows access to museums and the rare mass events still authorized, while during a short period of the summer, it also offered access to restaurants.
The authorities continue to promote the Sputnik V vaccine and its ilk, including through financial incentives, but they are acting as if the battle is – at least temporarily – lost. Only 35.8% of Russians received at least one dose of vaccine (32.5% both doses), which is not a sufficient critical mass to rely on the health pass system.
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