The compulsory vaccination of public service employees will not have been enough.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered a week of paid vacation from October 30 to November 7 in the hope of curbing the deadly wave of Covid-19 in Russia.
This week coincides with the Russian school holidays and only November 1, 2 and 3 were open, due to weekends and public holidays.
Sign of the concern of the Kremlin, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Health, Tatiana Golikova, had recommended Tuesday to declare non-working the week of October 30 to November 7 throughout the country.
After a government meeting devoted to the epidemic, Vladimir Putin approved it.
He had several times in the past resorted to such a measure, supposed to limit the movement of people, and therefore of the virus.
"Please be responsible"
"Of course, I support the proposal to declare the period from October 30 to November 7 as non-working," he declared, before imploring the Russians, very recalcitrant, to be vaccinated: "Please , be responsible.
There are only two ways to get out of this period (epidemic): either by falling ill or by being vaccinated ”.
He called Russia's low vaccination rate “dangerous”.
Vladimir Poutine also called for speeding up screening and strengthening measures to isolate contact cases.
The Russian president has given the regions the option of starting earlier or extending the week off if the epidemic situation warrants it.
Vladimir Putin has always preferred nonworking periods to confinement, an unpopular restriction which also risks slowing down the fragile economic recovery.
Nevertheless, the Kremlin, which until then has mainly left the regions to take their own health measures, seems to resolve to act in the face of the deterioration of the epidemic situation.
Because in recent days, the country has several times broken records for daily contaminations and deaths due to Covid-19, in the midst of an epidemic outbreak fueled by a sluggish vaccination, non-existent health restrictions, distancing measures and little or no mask wearing. not respected.
Unvaccinated over 60s confined
Russia is the country in Europe hardest hit by the pandemic, with nearly 230,000 dead, according to the government report.
This number is however largely underestimated, the national agency of statistics Rosstat having, it, counted more than 400,000 victims at the end of August.
Faced with this observation, the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, announced Tuesday "urgent measures" to protect the most vulnerable categories, in particular the elderly, while the number of serious cases is increasing "day by day".
The Moscow authorities have thus ordered the compulsory vaccination of 80% of public service employees, against 60% currently, by January 1, 2022, the confinement of all unvaccinated over 60 years of age from October 25 to February 25 and the teleworking of “at least 30%” of company staff.
But, for many experts, the real battle against the virus is being played out in the field of vaccination, where Russia, yet one of the first countries to have developed a serum against Covid-19, is lagging behind.
Indeed, less than a third of the 144 million Russians are fully vaccinated, according to the specialized site Gogov which establishes a daily assessment.
The majority of the population remains skeptical of local vaccines.
According to independent polls, more than half of Russians do not plan to be vaccinated.
