COVID-19 declares ‘Unemployment Week’ in Moscow Coronavirus pandemic News
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The mayor said the spread of coronavirus infection in the Russian capital has “significantly deteriorated.”
The mayor of Moscow has announced that he has a “no firm” week in the Russian capital, and has told non-essential workers to stay home as the coronavirus case has hit a six-month high.
Sergei Sobyanin’s decision on Saturday changed the tone for Russian officials, where President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed that the country has handled it better than most pandemics.
“The state of the spread of coronavirus infection has worsened significantly in the last week,” Sobyanin said on his website, which recorded 6,701 infections a day in the city, the most since December last year. He added that “thousands” of hospital beds have been re-used for coronavirus patients.
“We can’t react to a situation like this,” he said. “To stop the growth of infections and save people’s lives, I signed a decree today that envisages working days from June 15 to 19.”
The order affects all 12 million city workers in Moscow, except for essential workers. Non-essential employees do not have to work from home during the period, but will maintain their salaries.
With the weekends and holidays of June 14th, it means that most of Moscow’s employees will not return to their offices until June 20th.
Sobyanin will also close food parks and playgrounds, announcing that restaurants, bars and clubs will be banned from serving customers from 11pm to 6am.
The mayor also asked employers to at least 30% of workers who did not get vaccinated to work from home after a week of closure.
Moscow Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova said on Saturday that 78% of the city’s 14,000 hospital patients with viruses are currently occupied.
“There are currently 498 people in Moscow hospitals working with coronavirus patients on ventilators, which is nearly 30 percent more than a week ago,” Rakova said.
He added that the number of young patients between the ages of 18 and 35 has increased “significantly” in the last two months.
Earlier this week, Sobyanin said Moscow would open several rural hospitals to accommodate the arrival of patients.
In recent weeks there have been an increase in cases across the country, as Russia is making efforts to integrate citizens despite the fact that home vaccines are available to the public.
About 12 percent of the country has been vaccinated so far, compared to 43 percent in the European Union and 51 percent in the United States, according to Our World in Data.
Bernard Smith of Al Jazeera reported from Moscow that the low rate of inoculation may be widespread skepticism about the vaccine among Russians.
“Between 60-70 per cent of the people here say they are not ready to be vaccinated and there seems to be a general distrust of what the government is trying to do to them,” Smith said.
“And that’s despite the fact that the Russian Sputnik vaccine is internationally recognized and very effective,” he said, adding that the jab is almost proven. 92 percent effective.
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