Russia’s coronavirus cases pass 1m mark
RUSSIA’S tally of confirmed coronavirus cases has surpassed one million as authorities reported 4,729 new cases.
With a total of 1,000,048 reported cases, Russia has the fourth largest caseload in the world after the US, Brazil and India.
More than 815,000 people have so far recovered, authorities said, and over 17,000 have died.
Experts say the true toll of the pandemic is much higher than all reported figures, due to limited testing, missed mild cases and concealment of cases by some governments, among other factors.
As of yesterday, Russia has lifted most lockdown restrictions in the majority of the country’s regions.
Last month, Russian authorities announced approval of the first ever Covid-19 vaccine – a move that Western experts met with scepticism and unease as the shots were only tested on a few dozen people.
Last week, officials announced starting advanced trials of the vaccine among 40,000 people. It remains unclear whether vaccination of risk groups – such as doctors and teachers – announced earlier this year will be part of the trials or carried out in parallel.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said last month one of his daughters had already been vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong has begun a voluntary mass-testing programme for coronavirus as part of a strategy to break the chain of transmission in the city’s third outbreak of the disease.
The virus-testing scheme has become a flash point of political debate in Hong Kong, with many distrustful over resources and staff being provided by the China’s central government and fears that residents’ DNA could be collected during the exercise.
The Hong Kong government has dismissed such concerns, saying that no personal data will be attached to the specimen bottles and that samples will be destroyed in Hong Kong after the exercise.
The testing programme began at 8am, with residents heading to more than 100 testing centres.
Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam said more than 10,000 people, including most of Hong Kong’s ministers, had already been tested yesterday. She said: “This largescale universal community testing scheme is beneficial to fighting the epidemic and beneficial to our society. It will also help Hong Kong come out of the pandemic unscathed and is conducive to the resumption of daily activities.”
More than 500,000 people signed up in advance for the programme. It is aimed at identifying silent carriers of the virus who could be spreading the disease.
Hong Kong’s worst outbreak in July was blamed in part on an exemption from quarantine for airline staff, truck drivers from China and sailors on cargo ships.