Putin brings in non-working week as infection firebreak

VLADIMIR PUTIN is to introduce a “non-working week” as a firebreak against spiralling Covid-19 infections and deaths.

The Russian president is poised to sign off on a plan by his deputy prime minister to encourage businesses to shut their doors and restrict access to public places such as gyms and restaurants to vaccinated customers.

Mr Putin is also likely to order all Russian regions to impose stay-at-home orders for the unvaccinated elderly.

Russia reported a record 1,015 deaths and 33,740 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours yesterday. About 35 per cent of 144 million Russians have been vaccinated.

Mr Putin, who declared a “victory” over coronavirus last year, has been anxious to avoid words such as “lockdown” or “quarantine” so as not to antagonise Covid-weary Russians.

Russia was one of the first nations to develop an effective vaccine but mixed messaging from the government and state media that mocked lockdowns in the West and questioned the efficacy of other vaccines have left many distrustful of the home-grown Sputnik V jab.

A deputy speaker of the Russian par- liament made a rare admission at the weekend that the government had failed to convince people to get vaccinated.

Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, sought yesterday to distance the authorities from those accusations, bemoaning “a tradition to blame everything on the state”.

He said Russia had “coped brilliantly” in rolling out mass vaccinations, but admitted that the government could have done more to explain the “lack of alternative to vaccination”.

Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, scolded his health minister yesterday for enforcing compulsory mask-wearing and encouraging vaccination, a day after the country’s public hospitals suspended non-urgent treatments amid a surge in Covid cases.

Record figures showed 2,000 new cases were being reported daily among the 9.3 million population.

“Why did you mobilise the police to check mask wearing?” Mr Lukashenko yelled at Dmitry Pinevich, the Belarusian health minister, in parliament. “Why are you bullying people like that?” Officially, nearly 5,000 people have died, but the real figure is believed to be up to 15 times higher.