Covid-19: in Russia, vaccination to the penalty
The Russian Ministry of Labor has asked companies to vaccinate at least 80% of their employees.
AP - Alexander Zemlianichenko
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
In the past 24 hours, Russia has counted nearly 24,000 new Covid-19 contaminations for a new record of 799 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
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With our correspondent in Moscow,
Jean-Didier Revoin
With six million people infected and nearly 400,000 deaths, Russia has been among the most affected countries since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic.
The unexpected arrival of the Delta variant also caught the authorities by surprise, forcing them to admit that they would not meet their goal of vaccinating 60% of the population by the fall.
Publicly, Vladimir Putin said he was opposed to the vaccination obligation, while acknowledging that the regional authorities could impose it depending on the circumstances.
This is already the case in Moscow where 60% of employees in the service sector in contact with customers had to be vaccinated or face unpaid leave.
At the weekend, the Ministry of Labor recommended companies across the country to vaccinate at least 80% of their employees.
The volunteers will be able to benefit from additional paid leave while the refractory will be put on unpaid leave.
If the figures are impressive - more than 750 deaths daily for 25,000 new infections - they seem to show that Russia has reached a plateau.
But for scientists, group immunity can only be achieved if 90% of the population is immune.
At present, only 22% of the 145 million Russians have received at least one injection.
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Russia
Coronavirus
Health and medicine