Russia cuts COVID-19 isolation to 7 days as cases rise

Russian authorities are shortening the required isolation period for people infected with COVID-19 from 14 days to seven days as the country faces a surge in COVID-19 cases, fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant.

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who heads the country’s coronavirus task force, said Tuesday that health officials were “optimizing our approaches to quarantining and testing our citizens, including reducing the quarantine period to seven days.” ”.

Golikova added that other policy changes will be adopted in the coming days, without elaborating. Nor did he explain the reason why the isolation period was cut. Previous rules called for a two-week isolation period for those who tested positive, with a mandatory follow-up test on the 11th.

Russia already has by far Europe’s worst death toll in the pandemic with more than 322,000 fatalities according to its official count, a number that other statistics suggest is a significantly undercount.

The daily number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Russia has doubled over the last week, rising from more than 15,000 on January 10 to 31,252 on Tuesday. Officials say the surge could end up the country’s largest yet, but have so far announced no major restrictions to stop it.

Anna Popova, director of the Russian public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said last week that new daily cases could reach six figures. President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia has “a couple of weeks” to prepare for the unprecedented wave.

Golikova said on Tuesday that 1,682 cases of omicrons have been officially confirmed in Russia so far, but the real number is much higher. The new variant is already dominating in Moscow, the peripheral region and Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, he said.

The recent spike in infections has so far not led to an increase in hospitalizations, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Tuesday.

“So far we are not seeing the same proportion of severe cases as with delta,” Mishustin said, adding that “we must be prepared for any course of events.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that authorities were not discussing another nationwide lockdown.

Russia only had one nationwide lockdown, in 2020, though many Russians were ordered off work for a week in October 2021 amid a spike in reported cases and deaths. On Friday, the government decided to postpone indefinitely the introduction of restrictions for unvaccinated people, which would have been extremely unpopular with Russians who are hesitant to get vaccinated.

Nearly half of Russia’s population of 146 million has been fully vaccinated, despite Russia boasting that it was the first country in the world to approve and launch a domestically developed coronavirus vaccine.

In Moscow, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin extended his orders forcing companies to keep at least 30% of staff working from home and people over 60 to stay home until April 1, but said at this time there was no need for additional restrictions.

The Russian capital reported 8,342 new infections on Tuesday, more than double the figure from just a week ago.

Russia’s state coronavirus task force has recorded more than 10.8 million confirmed infections and 322,678 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Russia’s state statistics agency, which uses broader counting criteria, pushes the death toll much higher, saying the total number of virus-related deaths between April 2020 and October 2021 exceeded 625,000.