Moscow, October 4 (BNA): Russia announced, on Sunday, a record daily death toll from the emerging coronavirus (Covid-19), the fifth time in a week that deaths reached a new record.
The National Coronavirus Task Force said 890 deaths were recorded over the past day, exceeding the 887 cases reported on Friday. The task force also said the number of new infections in the past day was the second-highest of the year at 25,769.
Overall, Russia, with a population of 146 million, has the highest death toll in Europe from the pandemic, nearly 210,000, the Associated Press reports.
But despite the continued rise in the number of daily deaths and new cases of infection in the country, Russian officials say there are no plans to impose a lockdown. Regulations to wear masks exist but are loosely applied.
Moscow briefly tried over the summer to require proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test for internal customers in restaurants and bars, but abandoned the program after business owners complained about declining revenues.
Although Russia boasts of creating the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, only 32.5% of its population has had at least one vaccine and only 28% are fully vaccinated. Critics mainly blamed the failure of a vaccine and conflicting messages that authorities were sending about the outbreak.
In addition, antibody tests for the coronavirus are popular in Russia, and some observers suggest that this contributes to low numbers of vaccinations.
Western health experts say antibody tests are unreliable either for diagnosing COVID-19 or for assessing immunity to it. The antibodies that these tests look for can only serve as evidence of a previous infection. Scientists say it is still not clear what level of antibodies indicate a person is protected from the virus and for how long.
President Vladimir Putin has observed periods of self-isolation since mid-September after dozens of people were found infected in the Kremlin. Putin met the Turkish leader last week after emerging from his recent period of isolation.
RAE