COVID-19 surge shows no signs of abating in Russia as cases rise for 5th consecutive week in Europe

A medical staffer treats a patient with coronavirus at an ICU at the Regional Clinical Hospital 1, in Krasnodar, south Russia on Tuesday. AP

Moscow/Geneva: Daily coronavirus cases and deaths in Russia remained at all-time highs Wednesday as more regions announced extending existing restrictions in an effort to tame the country’s unrelenting surge of infections.

Russia’s state coronavirus task force reported over 40,000 new confirmed cases from a day earlier, the most since the start of the pandemic. It was the fifth time in seven days that the country set a daily case record.

The task force also reported 1,189 deaths, another daily record.

Russia is five days into a nationwide non-working period that the government introduced to curb the spread of the virus. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered many Russians to stay off work between 30 October and 7 November. He authorised regional governments to extend the number of non-working days, if necessary.

Officials in Russia’s Novgorod region, located 500 kilometers northwest of Moscow, said Monday that the time away from workplaces would last another week. Two other regions — the Tomsk region in Siberia and the Chelyabinsk region in the Ural Mountains — followed suit Wednesday.

“One non-working week is not enough to break the chain of infection,” Tomsk governor Sergei Zhvachkin said.

Governors of at least three other regions have said they were considering extending the non-working period.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that no decision on a possible nationwide extension has been made.

“If any other decisions are (made), we will inform you,” Peskov said during a conference call with reporters.

Russia’s weekslong surge in infections and deaths comes amid low vaccination rates, lax public attitudes toward taking precautions and the government’s reluctance to toughen restrictions.

Less than 35% of Russia’s nearly 146 million people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus , even though Russia approved a domestically developed vaccine against the coronavirus months before most countries.

In all, Russia’s state coronavirus task force has reported more than 8.6 million confirmed coronavirus cases and over 242,000 deaths in the pandemic — by far the highest death toll in Europe.

However, reports by Russia’s state statistical service Rosstat that tally coronavirus -linked deaths retroactively reveal much higher mortality numbers. A report released last week indicated that some 462,000 people with COVID-19 died between April 2020 and September of this year.

Russian officials have said the task force only includes deaths for which COVID-19 was the main cause and uses data collected from medical facilities. Rosstat uses wider criteria for counting virus-related deaths and takes its numbers from civil registry offices where the process of registering a death is finalized.

COVID-19 cases rise in Europe for 5th consecutive week

The number of coronavirus cases has risen in Europe for the fifth consecutive week, making it the only world region where COVID-19 is still increasing, the World Health Organization reported Wednesday.

In its weekly report on the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said new cases jumped by 6% in Europe compared to an 18% increase the previous week. The weekly number of new infections in other regions either fell or remained about the same, according to the report.

The sharpest drops were seen in the Middle East, where new cases decreased by 12%, and in Southeast Asia and Africa, where they fell by 9%.

Overall, 3 million new weekly cases were reported globally, the report states. The number of deaths from COVID-19 worldwide rose by 8%, driven mainly by Southeast Asia, where deaths spiked by 50%.

The coronavirus infection rate was by far the highest in Europe, which reported about 192 new cases per 100,000 people, followed by the Americas, which had about 72 new cases per 100,000.

While the Czech Republic, Poland and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe have reported recent infection spikes, the continuing rise in confirmed cases across Europe has been driven mostly by Britain, Russia, Turkey and Romania, the report showed.

Leading British medical authorities have called for the government to again require infection precautions such as mask-wearing and social distancing, but the government has insisted the health system can handle the increasing caseload.

Some scientists worry that waning immunity from vaccinations across Europe could allow even more people to fall ill from COVID-19 during the winter season.

WHO nevertheless has slammed rich countries for rolling out booster vaccine programs while the majority of poor countries have yet to administer shots to their most vulnerable populations; the agency said last week that about 1 million booster shots are administered every day, about three times the number of COVID-19 doses given in poor countries.

WHO said the easier-to-spread delta variant remains predominant worldwide and continues to mostly crowd out other variants; more than 99% of COVID-19 samples sequenced by an international database were the delta variant.

It said delta’s spread has been slightly slower in some parts of South America, where other variants, including the mu variant, account for a large proportion of cases.