New Coronavirus News from 1 Nov 2021

China grows more isolated as Asia Pacific neighbors start living with Covid-19 [CNN, 1 Nov 2021]

by Ben Westcott

Hong Kong (CNN)From Australia to South Korea and across Asia Pacific, the final bastions of "zero-Covid" are easing restrictions and opening borders as the region prepares to live with the virus -- except for one major holdout.

China, the country where Covid-19 was first detected nearly two years ago, remains determined to eliminate the virus inside its borders, with officials there showing no signs of backing down.

Despite fully vaccinating more than 75% of its population, China is sticking to its stringent zero-Covid strategy, including closed borders, lengthy quarantine measures for all international arrivals and local lockdowns when an outbreak occurs.

On Tuesday, the northwestern city of Lanzhou, with a population of more than 4 million people, went into lockdown after just six new daily Covid-19 cases were reported there. To date, Lanzhou has recorded 68 cases attached to the newest outbreak.

And this approach seems set to stay, at least for now. Even though some Chinese health officials have suggested a tentative or partial relaxation once vaccination rates hit 85%, analysts say most restrictions are unlikely to ease within the next 12-months.

In China's Asia Pacific neighbors, however, things couldn't be more different.

From Monday, South Korea will begin to live with the virus despite thousands of new confirmed cases every week. New measures will allow up to 10 people to meet in private gatherings in the Greater Seoul area and up to 12 for the rest of the country, while most businesses will be permitted to fully reopen as curfews end.

And in Japan's capital Tokyo, curfews were lifted for bars and restaurants at the end of last month, despite hundreds of new cases across the country every day.

And it's not just domestic restrictions that are lifting around the region.

While both Japan and South Korea continue to maintain strict border controls, including quarantines for most international arrivals, from Monday Thailand will welcome visitors from 63 countries, as long as they can prove they are fully vaccinated and have tested negative for Covid-19.

And on Monday, Australia also begins to partially reopen its borders to citizens who are fully vaccinated, ending a strict border regime that has separated families for almost two years.

Much of this is thanks to generally high vaccination rates across Asia Pacific. Despite a slow start to their rollouts, countries including Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore are now among the most vaccinated in the world per capita.

South Korea's return to 'normal life'
South Korea was one of the first countries to suffer a major outbreak of Covid-19, seeing hundreds of cases a day as early as March 2020.

It had early success bringing infections under control, as did many other Asia Pacific countries.

While Europe and North America suffered major outbreaks in 2020, nations including South Korea, China, Thailand and Australia managed to keep the virus at manageable levels -- or kept it out for long periods of time.

But outbreaks of the highly infectious Delta variant in mid-2021 have sent cases soaring across the region and led almost all countries to focus on a move to vaccinations and living with the virus, rather than elimination.

Halloween Covid scare forces Shanghai Disney into lockdown as China steps up efforts to eradicate virus

"With the Delta variant, its almost impossible to eradicate," Zhengming Chen, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford, said. "The experience in Australia and New Zealand, they tried very hard, but you reach a point where you just can't carry on in the lockdown. It's going to come up again and again."

On Friday, with at least 73% of South Korea's population now fully vaccinated, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said it was time for the country to "take the first step resuming our normal life."

A 10 p.m. curfew on businesses, including restaurants and bars, has been lifted, while mass gatherings of up to 499 people can take place if everyone is vaccinated. All students will head back to school from November 22, according to the Education Ministry.

The removal of restrictions comes despite rising Covid-19 cases over the past week. On Sunday, South Korea reported 1,686 new infections, bringing its total to 366,386 since the pandemic began. To date, 2,858 have died in South Korea from the disease.

Prime Minister Kim said it wasn't the end of the fight against Covid-19, "but a new beginning."

The country's health minister also warned there would likely be a rise in infections as a result of reopening.

Other countries in the region are following suit, despite local outbreaks of the virus.

Over the past week Thailand reported an average of nearly 9,000 new Covid-19 infections per day, far higher than the months of single-digit cases during much of 2020. Despite the high infection rates, the country is moving to reopen to international travelers in a bid to save its tourism industry, which accounted for more than 11% of its GDP in 2019, according to Reuters.

From Monday, citizens from dozens of "low-risk" countries, including Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, can travel to Thailand without needing to quarantine. In a statement on October 12, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said the country couldn't afford to miss the December holiday period. "We must act quickly, but still cautiously, and not miss the opportunity to entice some of the year-end and new year holiday season travelers," he said.

Thailand's decision is at least partially reliant on high vaccination rates among inbound tourists. Within Thailand, less than half, or around 42% of the population has received both vaccination doses as of October 28.

For the Asia Pacific region, the emergence from zero-Covid is an experiment to see if populations that previously cherished low infection rates and an elimination strategy can move safely to living with the virus.

Australia's two biggest states, New South Wales and Victoria, have already abandoned the elimination strategy, starting to live with the virus once more than 70% of the adult population was fully vaccinated.

So far, infection rates haven't risen, and on Monday, Australia's borders in selected states will reopen to citizens for the first time.

Chen said while cases were certain to rise, vaccination had substantially reduced the severity of Covid-19 for many patients and given countries the window to reopen.

"At some stage you have to open, you have to actually allow the cases to go up but in a manageable way," he said. "You can't just permanent lockdown because the virus is there circulating."

China doubles down on zero-Covid
But China is showing no sign of relaxing its hardline approach to Covid-19.

At present, China's borders are mostly closed, with airline travel severely reduced and foreign students and tourists banned from entry. Chinese citizens and certain other international visitors can enter, but they must quarantine for at least two weeks.

Inside the country, even a small number of cases in a city leads to quick, sweeping lockdowns.
Part of the reason behind China's reluctance to reopen its borders is the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which are due to begin in February. After seeing the chaos and postponements that marked the leadup to the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, the Chinese government is unlikely to want a repeat.

But the 2022 Winter Olympics isn't the only major event next year that is playing into Beijing's strategy, according to Steven Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute. In November, the Chinese Communist Party will hold its 20th Congress, a twice a decade mass meeting of the country's leadership where President Xi Jinping is expected to cement a third term in office.

Tsang said Xi didn't want any sign the virus was out of control inside the country before he went to the Congress in November. "How can Xi Jinping appear to have not beaten the virus?" he said. "Xi has been saying the Chinese system is superior."

Xi's political ambitions are one of the reasons the country's strict measures are being drawn out, Tsang said, no matter how much damage they might be doing to places such as Hong Kong, the global financial hub where strict travel rules are proving extremely unpopular, especially among the city's expatriate workforce.

"As a global finance center it needs to have a much more user-friendly entrance system, but the Chinese view, Xi's view, of Hong Kong is that it is a global financial center for China," he said.

Chen, from the University of Oxford, said it was also possible there was uncertainty about the effectiveness of Chinese-developed vaccines among the country's leadership. One of the most commonly used shots, Sinovac, has been shown to have much lower levels of efficacy in international trials than mRNA vaccines, including Pfizer and Moderna.

In addition, he said not a great number of trials were done on senior citizens, potentially leaving them vulnerable in the event of an outbreak.

There have been some minor cracks in the uniform support for China's elimination strategy.
Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in October that once the country had fully vaccinated 85% of its population, perhaps in early 2022, it would be safe to relax restrictions.

"Why shouldn't we open up?" he said, according to state-run China Daily.

Chen said it was likely China is watching to see what happens in the rest of the region before deciding what to do about its own borders. If there are few major outbreaks in Asia Pacific nations living with Covid, then maybe Beijing will consider an earlier opening, he said.
"That gives China some confidence to relax," he said.

This story has been corrected to clarify the size of private gatherings allowed in Seoul and South Korea.

Why are Covid infections in Germany rising? [The Local Germany, 1 Nov 2021]

By Rachel Loxton

After a period of stagnation, Covid infections are rising dramatically in Germany - even though much of the population is vaccinated. What's going on?

Germany is seeing a rising number of Covid-19 cases, and an increase in the number of patients with coronavirus being admitted to intensive care wards.

This isn’t entirely unexpected – experts have been warning for some time that a drastic fourth wave was imminent. They say it’s down to a number of factors.

What’s the situation compared to last year?
Most of us don’t look back on autumn 2020 fondly. A year ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel and the state ministers agreed on a so-called “lockdown light” as the infection figures skyrocketed. At the time the incidence had climbed above 100 cases per 100,000 people within seven days, and there were more than 18,000 daily infections. That partial lockdown went on to become progressively tougher – and lasted until around May 2021, much to everyone’s despair.

A year on and the situation is much more encouraging in some regards – for instance around 66.6 percent of the population is now fully vaccinated, whereas there was no approved Covid-19 vaccine last year.

However, Covid cases are spiking. On Saturday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) recorded more than 24,000 new infections and 86 deaths within 24 hours, as well as a nationwide 7-day incidence of 145.1 Covid infections per 100,000 people. On Monday November 1st, the 7-day incidence had climbed to 154.8.

The situation in intensive care units (ICU) also looks worse than last year: while 1,569 Covid patients were receiving intensive care on October 28th 2020, one year later there are around 1,808 people in ICU with Covid-19.

According to Frankfurt virologist Sandra Ciesek, the increase in new infections and the high occupancy rates in intensive care units mean that “we are even worse off compared to last year”, as she stated last Tuesday in the NDR Coronavirus-Update podcast.

Delta variant One thing is clear: the current Covid-19 numbers cannot be explained by a single cause. There are several factors playing a role in the current sharp increase. Experts say one main reason – and a large difference from autumn 2020 – is the spread of the virus variants.

In particular, the far more transmissible Delta variant of Covid “is contributing to the fact that the virus is now spreading faster,” epidemiologist Hajo Zeeb from the Leibniz Institute Bremen told German news site RND. The Delta variant was first discovered in India and has been the dominant virus variant in Germany since the end of June 2021.

“Delta spreads very effectively,” said Martin Stürmer, virologist and laboratory manager at the IMD Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Medicine and Diagnostics in Frankfurt.

Stürmer pointed out that politicians are moving towards loosening measures, rather than towards infection prevention.

The general view from the politics world is that the German health system is no longer at risk of becoming overburdened due to the vaccination coverage. That’s why Health Minister Jens Spahn believes Germany’s Covid ‘state of emergency’ should be allowed to expire later in November.

But Stürmer said there was too much focus on the end of the “epidemiological emergency” and about a UK-style “Freedom Day”, which he says the infection situation doesn’t allow yet.

Fewer measures – and concern about virus decreasing
The German government insists that there will be no more lockdowns or school closures in the pandemic. But according to some experts, that means there are not as many resources to combat the spread of the virus.

“In contrast to last year, we now have the vaccinations, but we have also lost weapons against the virus,” said Stürmer.

Last year, measures were still strongly based on the 7-day incidence – and due to the drastically rising numbers at that time, the nationwide partial lockdown came into effect on November 2nd.

“The hospitalisation rate is now the central control button – but there are no nationwide limits on when new measures will be introduced again,” said Stürmer.

The RKI reported the hospitalisation incidence on Monday as 3.46 per 100,000 population, but there are large differences in the incidence between the states. Around Christmas time last year, the hospitalisation incidence reached around 15.

Scientists say that people are not as worried about rising Covid numbers and may be fatigued from previous measures.

“The concern for personal health and that of family and relatives has noticeably decreased over the course of a year – also due to vaccinations,” said epidemiologist Zeeb.

Virologist Ciesek also spoke of a “habit effect” in the NDR podcast. People have become accustomed to the Covid figures and no longer perceive them as alarming to the same extent, she said.

Colder weather
Experts generally agree that seasonality plays a role in the development of respiratory viruses.
When it comes to Covid, we’ve often seen spikes in the number of cases when people tend to socialise more indoors in the colder months, rather than outside.

The German government and states have 3G (entry to the vaccinated, recovered and tested people) and 2G (excluding the unvaccinated) entry rules to many public spaces in place. But there is some concern that the rules are not enforced consistently everywhere.

Vaccination rate still too low – and declining immunity
Another reason for the rising numbers is that the vaccination rate in Germany is still too low, experts say.

RKI data shows 85.3 percent of the over 60s are fully vaccinated, and 73 percent of the 18-59-year-olds are fully jabbed. Overall, 66.7 percent of the whole population are inoculated against Covid.

Although the RKI has previously said the vaccination rate could be five percentage points higher than the official stats, Germany is still pushing for a higher take-up.

“The vaccination rate is therefore currently no reason to completely abandon infection prevention,” said Stürmer.

Furthermore, there is an increase in vaccination breakthroughs because immunity decreases over time.

“Someone who was vaccinated three quarters of a year ago and is over 70 should actually no longer be considered fully vaccinated according to current knowledge,” said Stürmer.

But vaccinations remain the best way out of the pandemic. According to Zeeb, vaccines provide proven protection, especially against severe courses of the disease.

This is also shown by the current situation in intensive care units. Doctors say most patients are unvaccinated.

“A year ago, people with severe courses of disease had to be treated in an intensive care unit because there were no vaccines yet – and even today, it is mostly unvaccinated people who end up in hospital,” said Zeeb.

Booster take-up slow
To boost immunity, Germany has been recommending a top-up shot to all risk groups, those over 70 and people who’ve had the vector vaccines AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson. However, the take-up has been slow.

The government has been criticised for not launching a strong enough booster jab campaign.

Last week Health Minister Spahn then came out and said that everyone in Germany is entitled to a Covid booster jab six months after their last shot (although people who’ve had Johnson & Johnson can get an mRNA Covid shot after four weeks.)

SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach previously called on authorities to start a fresh booster-vaccine campaign.

He said: “In view of the rising number of cases – also among the elderly – a new vaccination campaign for the use of booster vaccinations in this age group is now absolutely necessary.”
Zeeb also welcomed rapid booster vaccinations – especially for the elderly.

Holidays, neighbouring countries and regional differences
As we’ve seen in the entire course of the pandemic, there are also strong regional differences.
While Thuringia currently has the highest 7-day incidence with around 307 Covid cases per 100,000 people (as of Monday), Saarland is clearly below the nationwide number with an incidence of 72.5

It’s also noticeable that the federal states with long external borders – such as Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Saxony – are currently recording high infection figures.

“A possible explanation for the partly high incidence rates in many border regions could be the higher proportion of holidaymakers and cross-border commuters for work from neighbouring countries with high incidence rates,” said Zeeb. For example, the 7-day incidence in Austria is currently around 313, in the Netherlands 256.5 – significantly higher than in Germany.

However, the regional differences are also “multifactorial events”, said Stürmer. For example, there is also a connection between the varying period of the summer holidays and the incidence.

“The different end of the summer holidays depending on the federal state certainly also had an influence on the incidence of infection,” he said.

No more free rapid tests?
Another factor that may be contributing to the rise in cases is that the German government stopped offering free Covid-19 antigen tests to all on October 11th.

Now people have to pay a fee to take a test. The aim is to increase the pressure on people to get vaccinated. However, many people used the tests to monitor their infection status regardless of whether they were vaccinated or not. People are less likely to get a test now they have to pay for it.

CDC adds Russia to highest COVID-19 travel warning category | TheHill [The Hill, 1 Nov 2021]

BY MONIQUE BEALS

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday moved Russia to its category of highest travel risk.

The CDC designated Russia as "Level 4: COVID-19 Very High," meaning the country has had more than 500 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people for each of the past 28 days.

Belgium was also moved to the highest-risk category.

"Avoid travel to these destinations. If you must travel to these destinations, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel," the agency's website says of level four nations.

Just last week, Russia had 40,251 new coronavirus infections in a single day, marking a new record for the country.

Russia also set a new record for COVID-19 fatalities with 1,163 deaths on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin approached much of the pandemic with a relatively hands-off strategy. However, recent records led him to order most workers to stay at home for a week between Oct. 30 and Nov. 7 in an effort to mitigate the virus's continued spread. For some parts of Russia that have particularly high infection rates, the stay-at-home order will last longer.

Just 33 percent of Russians are vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 tracker.

"There are only two ways to get over this period — to get sick or to receive a vaccine,” Putin said last month. "It's better to get the vaccine, why wait for the illness and its grave consequences? Please be responsible and take the necessary measures to protect yourself, your health and your close ones."

Russia Reports Another Near-Record Daily Death Toll As COVID-19 Continues To Engulf Country [Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, 1 Nov 2021]

Russia has reported another 1,158 coronavirus-related deaths over the past 24 hours, just three fewer that the record set the previous day as the pandemic continues to engulf the country.

The country’s coronavirus task force said on November 1 that it had recorded 40,402 new COVID-19 infections, the third consecutive day the figure has topped 40,000. It added that some 932,000 patients are currently undergoing treatment for COVID-19 in Russia.

More than 8.5 million infections have been recorded in the country of 146 million during the pandemic. Russia’s official COVID-19 death count stands at about 240,000, the largest in Europe and fourth-highest in the world behind the United States, Brazil, and India.

But the task force counts only deaths directly caused by the virus. The state statistics service Rosstat, which counts COVID-19 deaths by wider criteria, released figures on October 29 indicating Russia’s death toll was about 462,000 as of the end of September, nearly twice the task force’s count at that time.

To contain the spread of infection, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a paid "nonwork" period from October 30 to November 7 during which most state agencies and private businesses are to suspend operations.

Moscow introduced the measures on October 28, shutting down kindergartens, schools, gyms, entertainment venues, and most stores, and restricting restaurants to takeout or delivery. Grocery stores, pharmacies, and companies operating key infrastructure remain open.

Access to museums, theaters, concert halls, and other venues in Russia is limited to people holding digital codes on their phones to prove they have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19, a practice that will remain after November 7. Unvaccinated people older than 60 have been ordered to stay home.

Many Russians are using the time off to take a Black Sea vacation or a trip to Egypt or Turkey.

Authorities have blamed soaring infections and deaths on the slow pace of Russia’s vaccination program. About 51 million Russians -- just over a third of the population -- were fully vaccinated as of October 31.

Russian Region Extends Off-Work Order as COVID-19 Cases Soar | Health News | US News [U.S. News & World Report, 1 Nov 2021]

By DARIA LITVINOVA,

Authorities in Russia’s Novgorod region have ordered most residents to stay off work for one more week starting Nov. 8 as coronavirus infections and deaths remained at all-time highs.

MOSCOW (AP) — Authorities in Russia's Novgorod region on Monday ordered most residents to stay off work for one more week starting Nov. 8 as coronavirus infections and deaths remained at all-time highs.

The Novgorod region was the first region to extend the nationwide non-working period between Oct. 30-Nov. 7 that was ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s state coronavirus task force on Monday reported more than 40,000 new confirmed COVID-19 cases for the third straight day and more than 1,100 deaths for the seventh day in a row - the highest levels in each category since the start of the pandemic.

Putin has said that governments in regions where the situation is the most dire could start the non-working days earlier and extend them if needed.

In Moscow, the non-working period started on Oct. 28, with city authorities shutting down many non-essential businesses. In the Novgorod region roughly 500 kilometers (310 miles) northwest of the Russian capital, non-working days began on Oct. 25.

On Monday, Novgorod's regional coronavirus task force reported 284 new infections — double the daily tally from a month ago when just over 140 new confirmed cases were reported each day. Governor Andrei Nikitin said there is no reason to expect the situation improving any time soon.

Russia’s daily numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths have been surging for weeks amid low vaccine uptake, lax public attitudes toward taking precautions and the government’s reluctance to toughen restrictions. Less than 35% of Russia's nearly 146 million people have been fully vaccinated so far, even though Russia was among the first in the world to approve and roll out a coronavirus vaccine.

The nonworking period is aimed to curb the spread by keeping people out of offices and off crowded public transportation. But in some cities including Moscow, restrictions have been loosely observed, and many people rushed to popular holiday destinations, such as Russia's Black Sea resorts, to take advantage of the break.

Anna Popova, head of Russia's public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor, told a government meeting on Monday that infections continued to grow in 78 of the more than 80 Russian regions.

President Putin on Monday described the situation as “very difficult” during a meeting with military officials and arms makers. “More than 40,000 of those infected. It has never happened (before),” the Russian leader said.

New Coronavirus News from 2 Nov 2021

Russia Imposes Digital Covid Passes Amid Virus Surge [The Moscow Times, 2 Nov 2021]

Russia Imposes Digital Covid Passes Amid Virus Surge [The Moscow Times, 2 Nov 2021]

Russia will soon implement nationwide digital passes showing proof of vaccination or recent recovery from coronavirus to enter public areas and events, the state-run TASS news agency reported Monday.

News of the digital pass system, which was first briefly used in Moscow this summer, comes amid a nationwide paid holiday aimed at reversing a record surge in Covid-19 deaths and infections.

The scannable barcode system is required to fight the proliferation of black-market passes and vaccination certificates, authorities say.

According to TASS, authorities in each of Russia’s 85 regions have imposed the QR code requirement for visiting certain public places.

In seven regions, the QR code system will not come into place immediately, instead appearing in mid-December.

A detailed list of which venues accept QR codes in each Russian city and region is available in the statistics section of the national Covid-19 task force’s website.

Moscow, the epicenter of Russia’s outbreak, currently requires QR codes for visits to museums and theaters. Starting Nov. 8, the QR codes will be required at any entertainment and sporting events with attendance of more than 500 people.

St. Petersburg, meanwhile, has imposed strict QR code requirements to enter any venue, including shopping malls and hotels.
QR codes are scanned by a smartphone upon entry and show the user’s data and their vaccination status or recent recovery from a tested Covid-19 case.

“It’s no accident that the regions are introducing QR codes,” said Mikhail Shumakov, deputy head of the Natsionalniye Prioritety state-backed NGO that oversees President Vladimir Putin’s national priorities.

“Fake certificates of a previous illness, PCR test or fake vaccination certificates prolong the pandemic for everyone,” Shumakov told TASS.

Last week, all of Russia’s 85 regions mandated vaccination for certain categories of workers.

Foreigners Cancel Trips to Russia Over Covid Pass Uncertainty [The Moscow Times, 2 Nov 2021]

Foreign tourists are canceling trips to Russia in droves over confusion surrounding digital coronavirus passes after current nationwide restrictions are lifted, the Russian Association of Tour Operators (ATOR) said Tuesday.

ATOR head Maya Lomidze said foreign visitors vaccinated with non-Russian jabs are not allowed to visit popular tourist destinations like museums and theaters in certain cities.

Moscow, the epicenter of Russia’s Covid-19 outbreak, will require scannable digital passes known as QR codes at any entertainment or sporting event after the nationwide restrictions end on Nov. 7.

“Most of the foreign tourists coming to Russia are vaccinated. But in Russia, QR codes don’t work for those who have received foreign vaccines,” Lomidze told Interfax.

She added that Moscow allows foreigners to receive QR codes after submitting a negative PCR test, but other regions have not made that option publicly available.

“You can’t guarantee that QR codes won’t be required upon arrival at hotels. It’s unknown what sights foreign tourists will be able to visit and what documents they’ll need,” Lomidze said.
“After the non-working days, tourists will not be able to visit museums and theaters.”

Lomidze’s comments follow a since-denied announcement from authorities in the Leningrad region surrounding Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg that museums will allow visitors who have received non-Russian vaccines.

She did not specify how many foreigners have canceled tours since Russian President Vladimir Putin imposed a “non-working” period this week to curb record-breaking deaths and infections during the Delta-driven fourth wave of the pandemic.

Putin has authorized regional leaders to extend the “non-working” period beyond Nov. 7 if cases don’t fall. At least one region has exercised that option, ordering all non-essential workers to take a mandated paid holiday for an additional week.

Russia’s tourism sector has been hit hard by the pandemic, with authorities reporting 64,400 foreign visitors from January-July 2021 compared with nearly 2 million during the same period in 2020.

Russia counts cost of missteps, vaccine refusals as COVID tide keeps rising [Reuters, 2 Nov 2021]

By Polina Nikolskaya and Maxim Shemetov

ORYOL, Russia, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Ambulance attendant Roman Stebakov has come face-to-face with COVID-19 many times - but he'd rather take his chances with the disease than get himself injected with Russia's Sputnik V vaccine.

"I won't get vaccinated until, I don't know, they break me and vaccinate me by force. I don't see the point in it, there are no guarantees it's safe," says the paramedic from Oryol, 300 km (185 miles) south of Moscow.

Outside one of the city's hospitals, a young woman, Alina, is clutching a bunch of papers certifying her grandmother's death. The old woman was unvaccinated and died of COVID-19 three weeks after being admitted.

But despite her loss, Alina, 26, says she won't take the vaccine because she has heard too many scare stories.

"There's not enough data, not enough checks."

Their attitudes help explain why the first nation in the world to approve a COVID-19 vaccine - and then export it to more than 70 countries - is struggling to inoculate its own population and has racked up record 24-hour death tolls on 21 days in the past month.

In conversations with Reuters, doctors and officials reeled off a host of factors that have fed the spread of the disease and forced Russia to revert to its tightest restrictions since the early months of the pandemic.

Besides vaccine hesitancy, they cited mixed messaging from the authorities, inconsistent policies, unreliable statistics and attempts to shift responsibility away from Moscow and on to the leaders of Russia's republics and regions.

The health ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment for this story.

WAITING IN AMBULANCES
At Oryol's Botkin Hospital, chief physician Alexander Lyalyukhin traced the origin of the latest and most virulent COVID wave to three weeks after the start of the school year in September. At that point some Russian regions sent students home for remote learning. Oryol, like most others, kept schools open.

The hospital is short of anaesthesists and infectious disease specialists. Most COVID patients need oxygen support and the supply is tight.

"Perhaps because the virus is more aggressive. We sometimes have fewer patients than there were in winter, but they consume more oxygen, by about a third," Lyalyukhin said.

Ambulance paramedic Dmitry Seregin said patients commonly wait for several hours in ambulances.

"The healthcare system cannot withstand such an influx. This wave is more than twice as strong in terms of the number of cases and the severity of the disease," he said.

Vladimir Nikolayev, deputy head of the regional health department, told Reuters there were still available beds and patients who needed oxygen were getting it.

"Unfortunately, if we'd carried out active vaccination we might not be in this situation," he said.

What Oryol is experiencing is typical of the country as a whole. The latest official figures on Monday showed the region ranked 40th out of Russia's 85 territories for new cases, with 326 in the previous 24 hours, and five new deaths.

As of last week, nearly 38% of people in Oryol had been injected with their first dose, compared with 39.4% nationally.

In Seregin's view, the low rates are down to official miscommunication about the vaccine. At first authorities said the injection would be good for two years, then they told people it would need renewing after six months, he said.

"Statements appear with different information from the very same people, and these make people distrustful of the state."

A source who previously worked in the COVID operations centre of one of Russia's regions said the country had locked down early at the start of the pandemic but then blundered by declaring victory too soon and going ahead with a national referendum in June 2020 on constitutional changes to allow President Vladimir Putin to run for potentially two more terms in office.

"We kind of drew a line on the coronavirus, vaccinations, masks and all the rest of it. And now we have what we have - an insane mountain of corpses," the source said.

UNRELIABLE DATA
Official figures on the pandemic's toll vary widely.

As of Monday, cumulative deaths stood at 239,693, according to the national coronavirus task force. The state statistics office puts the figure nearly twice as high read more , at around 462,000 between April 2020 and September 2021, while Reuters calculated that the number of excess deaths in Russia in the same period was more than 632,000 in comparison with the average mortality rate in 2015-2019.

Some experts say under-reporting of deaths has made people complacent.

"People think what's the point of me running away from it if it's no more scary than the flu," said Elena Shuraeva, head of the Oryol doctor's trade union.

Her husband Aleksei Timoshenko, a doctor at the COVID hospital, said the picture he sees at work was 6-7 times worse than implied by official figures. "And now people are afraid, they really see that many are getting sick and many are dying,” he said.

All this leaves a dilemma for Putin, who has repeatedly urged people to get vaccinated but said last month that even some of his own friends had delayed doing so.

A source close to the Kremlin said there was evidence that the latest restrictions - which include a nationwide workplace shutdown this week and increasing requirements for people to prove their vaccine status to get access to certain venues - was prompting an increase in take-up. Oryol's governor Andrei Klychkov said people were being vaccinated three times faster than before.

The source close to the Kremlin said compulsory vaccination was out of the question because it would rebound on the government. "It will be seen as an attack on freedom. And that, you know, could be like a powder keg."

New CDC Covid-19 Warnings: Avoid Travel To Russia, Belgium, Slovakia, Burkina Faso [Forbes, 2 Nov 2021]

By Bruce Y. Lee

Even if you can see Russia from your house, you may not want to go there right now. That’s because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has just “leveled up” Russia and three other destinations in a bad way. They’re now at Level 4 on the CDC’s Covid-19 Travel Recommendations.

Such CDC levels are like golf scores or the number of times you accidentally hit yourself in the face with a frying pan. The lower the number, the better. Level 4 is the highest of four levels. It means that the Covid-19 risk in that particular destination is currently “very high” and that you should avoid travel there, regardless of whether you’re vaccinated. In other words, it’s the “don’t go there” level.

Belgium, Burkina Faso, and Slovakia were the three other destinations to go from Level 3 to Level 4 on Monday. As I covered earlier this month for Forbes, a destination moves from Level 3 to Level 4 when the number of reported Covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents over the past 28 days goes from the 100 to 500 range up to above 500. To put things in perspective, 28 days is only a little more than two Scaramuccis, which isn’t that much time. Level 3 means that the Covid-19 risk is “high” without the “very” in front of it. While the CDC warns unvaccinated folks against travel to Level 3 destinations, it urges everyone against all non-essential travel to Level 4 destinations. So you may want to postpone your plans to go to Heuvelland, Belgium, in order to use their potato vending machine, because there are, after all, other ways to get potatoes.

Russia’s relationship with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) throughout the pandemic has been quite a saga. It certainly hasn’t been a rom-com or even a bromantic comedy. Early on during the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than taking the necessary measures to contain the virus, the Russian government instead downplayed the virus, its spread, and its impact. Unlike some political leaders, the SARS-CoV-2 didn’t care what was said about it and just kept spreading. (Does such a situation in 2020 sound vaguely familiar?)

Eventually, Russia’s President Vladamir Putin had to acknowledge that the virus was a problem, as Andrew Higgins described in a April 10, 2020, New York Times article entitled, “After Months of Denial, Russia Admits the Virus Is Taking Hold.” Nevertheless, over the next few months, Putin claimed that Russia was “we are exiting the coronavirus situation steadily with minimal losses,” as Holly Ellyatt reported in June 2020 for CNBC. He also criticized the U.S. for placing “party interests higher than the interests of the people” and then U.S. President and current Mar-A-Lago resident Donald Trump for lack of leadership. Of course, Russia never did “exit” the coronavirus situation, unless you consider “having more and more Covid-19 cases” as exiting.

In mid-2020, the Russian government began focusing on winning the Covid-19 vaccine arms race, which in essence was the get Covid-19 vaccines in arms race. Russia’s Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology was developing a Covid-19 vaccine called Sputnik V, named after the world’s first artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. This two dose vaccine is somewhat similar to the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines. It employs an engineered version of an adenovirus to deliver into your cells the genetic code used to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into human cells. Unlike the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines though, Sputnik V uses one adenovirus, rAd26, for the first dose and a different one, rAd5, for the second dose.

In August 2020, Putin announced that the Health Ministry had approved Sputnik V, making it the first country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine. But Vladimir Isachenkov and Daria Litvinova reported for the Associated Press how scientists around the world were skeptical and uneasy about this approval. After all, the vaccine hadn’t completed Phase I, II, and III clinical trials yet.
Usually approval should come after such trials rather than before, just like saying, “that was delicious” should come after the food’s actually been cooked and eaten rather than before you even sit at the dinner table. In fact, at the time, it seemed like the vaccine had been tested in only 38 humans, based on a study published in The Lancet. Nevertheless, the Russian government began rolling out the Sputnik V vaccine in Russia soon thereafter. At the same time, they poo-poo’d Covid-19 vaccines developed by other countries.

That tact may have backfired. It’s important to be careful where you poo-poo. Telling people to not trust other Covid-19 vaccines while trying foist your vaccine upon them can be like telling a love interest to not trust anyone else besides you. Or yelling, “who farted” every time an odor arises. Raising distrust in other vaccines can raise distrust in vaccines in general. Even though the Sputnik vaccine eventually went through Phase I through III clinical trials, uptake of the vaccine hasn’t been great. Russia has fully vaccinated only about a third of its population.

That’s why the recent surge in Covid-19 coronavirus infections hasn’t been surprising.
Infections and deaths have reached record levels, as reported by Charles Maynes for NPR. Last Thursday, the number of new reported Covid-19 coronavirus infections in Russia exceeded 40,000 and the number of reported Covid-19-related death reached 1,159 over a 24-hour period. Those could in fact be underestimates of the actual number of cases and deaths. There have been questions about the accuracy of Russia’s reported numbers.

That same day, Moscow underwent a 10-day partial lockdown. The Mayor of Russia’s capital city, Sergei Sobyanin, ordered schools, restaurants, bars, cafes, salons, gyms, movie theaters, and car repair shops closed. However, interestingly, theaters and museums have remained open. So if your car is on the fritz, maybe you can wheel it to a museum or have it sit through a nice show.

Moscow certainly isn’t the only place in Russia ramping up Covid-19 measures. Putin recently declared October 30 through November as a “non-working week.” He also told regional governors that they can do what it takes to slow the spread of the virus. This has resulted in different Covid-19 precautions in different parts of Russia.

Belgium, Burkina Faso, Russia, and Slovakia weren’t the only destinations to “level up” on Monday. Poland went from Level 2, or “moderate” risk for Covid-19, up to Level 3. Laos was another newcomer to the Level 3 list. The country had previously been in the level “unknown” category.

The news wasn’t all bad on Monday. Two destinations, Fiji and Jamaica, dropped from Level 4 to Level 3.

Of course, the Covid-19 situations in different countries are dynamic, changing with time.
Similar to the U.S., Russia never really controlled the spread of the virus. It’s 8,417,305 reported Covid-19 cases and 235,318 Covid-19-related deaths are the fifth highest totals in each category among all the countries in the World. The number of new Covid-19 coronavirus infections each day has been on the upswing since mid-September. There’s a good chance that Russia will remain at Level 4 for a while. In other words, don’t plan on “Russian” to that part of the world for any non-essential travel anytime soon.