◆ Russia uses surveillance, threat of jail time to enforce quarantines.

MOSCOW — It took a threeday holiday in Spain to turn Irina Sannikova from a respected infectious-diseases doctor into the scandalous subject of a headline in Russian state-owned media, calling her “Dr. Death.”

Sannikova, from the southern Russian city of Stavropol, failed to undergo mandatory 14-day self-isolation after returning and continued holding university lectures and meetings, before coming down last week with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Charged with endangering lives, she could face five years in prison if she infected someone who later died of the viral illness.

As a result of her trip, around 1,200 people had to be tested, at least 11 of whom were found to have the virus. Russia has reported fewer than 500 cases of the novel coronavirus and just one death possibly linked to COVID-19, but Moscow authorities said the death was caused by blood clots, not the virus.

Still, Russian officials are concerned that the threat of five years in prison is not harsh enough to deter possible coronavirus spreaders. On Monday, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin ordered that the government develop tougher measures against people who breach mandatory quarantines.

Russia has pulled some tools from its authoritarian toolbox to battle the disease, including the use of facial-recognition technology to track people ordered into self-isolation. The government is also developing a system using geolocation data from mobile operators to monitor individuals.

Russia closed its border with China in January and this month required anyone returning from abroad to self-isolate for 14 days.

Teams of police and doctors have been conducting raids on hotels, student dormitories and apartments to track people who traveled from China before the border closure, according to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

“Conducting raids is an unpleasant task but is necessary, including for the potential carriers of the virus,” he said last month. A student from China, ordered to self-isolate, was caught on surveillance cameras violating her quarantine when she went outdoors to meet a friend, he said.

In Soviet times, the rules were suffocating, but people found ways to get around them. The workaround culture was celebrated in the saying of those times: “If it’s forbidden, but you really want to, that means you can.”

It’s not so easy in the time of the coronavirus pandemic. Authorities in Russia and elsewhere are refocusing their surveillance-state apparatus from political dissent to health controls.

At the height of the crisis in China, drones were deployed to harass people not wearing masks, and police were outfitted with equipment to scan passersby for signs of fever. South Korea, Singapore and other countries used security cameras, credit card data and other digital crumbs to retrace the movements of patients before they were infected.

In Moscow, authorities announced this month that those returning from outside Russia would be monitored using the city’s more than 178,000 facial-recognition cameras. Moscow Police Chief Oleg Baranov said last week that facial-recognition cameras had detected more than 200 people who violated mandatory self-isolation.

Police have the details of every person who returns to Russia by plane, car or train, according to Russian officials. More than 90,000 people in Russian are under observation for possible contact with the virus.

Kirill Koroteev of the legal and human rights group Agora said the surveillance of people in self-isolation was creating public distrust of the authorities.

“It looks more like a police operation, not a medical one,” he said. “I think people are reluctant to accept that they will be facially controlled each time they need to throw out the garbage or buy some bread and buckwheat. Now Muscovites are realizing the potential for abuse.”