The daily increase in infections in Russia exceeded on Thursday (October 8), for the third day in a row, 11,000: 11,493 new infections were detected since Wednesday. The day before, 11,115 infections were registered. Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is under quarantine.
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191 people have died in the past 24 hours, the pandemic headquarters said on Thursday. The total number of infections is 1,260,112, and the number of deaths is 22,056. The number of convalescents exceeded 1 million on Thursday and reached 1,002,329.
Russia’s chief sanitary doctor Anna Popova admitted on Wednesday that the epidemic situation in the country was “getting complicated”.
According to the figures she provides, in 60 regions of the Russian Federation – out of more than 80 – the number of infections is increasing. The situation is stable in around 20 regions. Although the main group of patients are people aged 30-49, there are more and more infections among people over the age of 60. – This is a bad symptom, because people over the age of 60 suffer more severely – Popova pointed out. There was also a slight increase in the number of cases among children. Popova, however, assured that the infection did not spread in schools.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is under quarantine, the Church’s press service announced on Thursday. The reason is that the 73-year-old dignitary recently had contact with a person diagnosed with the coronavirus.
The economist Anatoly Chubais, once the author of the Russian privatization, and now the head of the Rosnano corporation, informed on Wednesday about the coronavirus infection. On his Facebook page, Chubais wrote that he had checked himself in after going on a delegation and that he advised everyone to wear protective masks in public places and to respect social distancing.
The daily increase in infections in Russia is now similar to the period of the greatest increase in the epidemic this spring. However, now there is no talk of compulsory self-isolation similar to that of a few months ago.
The Izvestia daily reported on Thursday, citing MP Boris Mendelewicz, that the authorities had changed the criteria for assessing the situation. Previously, they took into account the number of infections. Now “they will take into account the number of cases of severe disease, the number of vacant hospital beds and ventilators and the mortality rate. It can be said that it all depends on the burden on the health care system” – said the deputy, sitting on the health committee of the State Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament) .
The number of vacant beds, however, is declining rapidly; in some regions the authorities openly admit it, and in some regions only medics and patients say about it, the daily “Kommersant” reported on Thursday.
Some Russian specialists forecast that the increase in the incidence will continue for at least three weeks. Nevertheless, as Izvestia reported, this forecast is optimistic – according to another opinion, the breakthrough in the epidemic will not occur until January 1 next year.
Anna Wróbel from Moscow
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