In my today’s coronavirus COVID-19 status report I would love to tell you that the situation in Russia is more or less stable. Unfortunately it isn’t. Over the last 24 hours the number of cases in Russia rose and now there are 658 cases in 55 regions of Russia (as of March 25). Recovered: 29 people. Deaths: 1.
First of all the positive news is: Russia has 85 regions, which means 30 regions are not affected by COVID-19 and do not yet have coronavirus cases. I know people who’ve left Moscow to travel to those regions while Moscow is dangerous.
Secondly, St. Petersburg has no new coronavirus COVID-19 cases today!
Moscow has the biggest number of cases so far: 410 cases total. At the same time Moscow authorities made a decision to allow people with mild disease to be treated at home. There are some conditions to be met though, for instance, people treated at home should have no higher than 38,5˚C and no dyspnea. This permission does not refer to at-risk groups, such as elderly people, pregnant women or people with chronic diseases.
Lockdown is going on. President made a public statement announcing the next week a temporary break of work in all offices and at all enterprises.
As part of the safety clampdown, all public places and entertainment facilities are closing too: nightclubs, bars and restaurants (which kept working up to now) will have a week lockdown too. Moscow mayor mentioned that parks, especially central ones should be closed, as well as shopping centres. Apart from grocery stores (basic goods and foodstuffs should be available) all the other stores are closing down.
The governor of St. Petersburg approved prolongation of lockdown for museums, theatres and sports facilities till the end of April. Fitness centres and swimming pools are shutting down tomorrow.
A few days ago it was announced the school kids will have an extended spring break. However this decision was changed. Kids will resume their studies on April 30, but remotely. Some schools will send out tasks for the kids to complete on their own. The other schools are going to practice on-line teaching, including video-conference facilities in zoom or other platforms. Home schooling rules.
It is time to stay at home. For many of us it’s going to be a new experience.
Just watched the PBS news Hour and their Moscow reporter said there were 10,000 cases in the city alone. Quite frankly it is hard to believe these reports that Russia has been so untouched. If that is the case why did Russia close it’s borders?
Hi, Cathy! I understand your doubts. I don’t know what is PBS is, I base my reports on COVID Global provided by John Hopkins University (which, I suppose, is a trustworthy non-Russian source). You can see yourself here: https://www.gisaid.org/epiflu-applications/global-cases-covid-19/. Of course, the situation is changing with every hour. In the morning we woke up to learn about 2 more deaths and growing number of cases (840 total in Russia at this moment). As I already mentioned in my answer to your previous comment, Russia is 1 week behind the US. The doctors here expect an outburst. But we still do hope that we won’t have such consequences as in Italy and France. In order to stop spread of the virus our government closed the borders beforehand (and I hope everybody understands why that was necessary). The next week in Russia is an all-over week-off. All the schools have switched for remote studies (my daughter is starting on-line lessons on Monday). All public places (theatres, cinemas, shopping centres, fitness & sports facilities, etc.) are closed. I hope that all preventive measures we have now will help us to avoid such a situation that Italy and France are in now. These are our hopes. We’ll see what happens next.