Russia recorded a new daily record for coronavirus infections on Friday, a sign of a new wave carried by the highly contagious variant Omicron.
Russia, the most bereaved country in Europe by Covid-19, has recorded 49,513 new contaminations in the past 24 hours, an absolute record since the start of the pandemic, according to government figures.
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The capital Moscow, epicenter of the epidemic in the country, also recorded an absolute record, for the second day in a row, with 15,987 new cases. Contagions have been on the rise in recent days, suggesting a particularly strong wave. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned last week that his country had two weeks to prepare before being struck down by this variant, calling for accelerated testing and vaccination.
Russia is just emerging from a particularly deadly wave caused by the Delta variant.
If the figures of the Russian government report 324,060 deaths from the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, those of the Rosstat statistical agency, which has a broader definition, report more than 600,000 deaths at the end of November.
Authorities are still struggling to convince Russians to get vaccinated.
Demographic decline in Russia
Even though this country has several vaccines of its own design, including Sputnik V, less than half of the 144 million Russians are completely immune to date, according to the specialty website Gogov. On Thursday, the developers of Moscow's flagship vaccine, Sputnik V, claimed in a statement "strong protection" against the Omicron variant, similar remarks to those of Mr Putin who claimed that the Russian vaccine was "more effective than the others used in the world”.
The Russian vaccine has still not been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), the process having been blocked for several months due to misunderstandings by Moscow about the information to be provided.
After strict confinement in the spring of 2020, the authorities refused to reintroduce such a measure, despite new epidemic waves, in order to limit economic losses.
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Covid-related deaths also appear to have worsened Russia's demographic decline, a worrying trend for years.
According to Rosstat, the number of deaths exceeded that of live births by 945,000 in the first 11 months of 2021, compared to almost 575,000 for the same period of the previous year.
