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Russia’s vast but underfunded healthcare system has been under significant strain in recent weeks as coronavirus cases spike again, with daily infections and deaths from viruses regularly breaking records.
Across the country, 81% of hospital beds that have been reserved for coronavirus patients were full on Wednesday.
Additionally, the Russian government reported a record number of daily deaths three times last week, and the number of new daily infections per 100,000 people has more than doubled since October 1, from 6 to more than 15.
Overall, Russia has recorded more than 2 million cases and more than 35,000 deaths, but experts say that all the figures around the world underestimate the true number of victims of the pandemic.
Russian media reports on the health system’s ability to respond to the surge have painted a grim picture in recent weeks.
Hospital corridors are full of patients on stretchers, and some are sitting on chairs in waiting rooms.
A video shot by Yelizaveta Titova, a visitor to the Tomsk hospital, shows patients lying in hospital corridors, struggling to breathe with their hands signed in markers by doctors.
But Russian authorities have continued to insist that there is no need for a nationwide shutdown or widespread business closures, but instead urge people to observe social distancing measures ordered by regional governments.
During the autumn resurgence of the virus, the Kremlin has consistently singled out regional governors.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told governors that they had “been given broad powers for” anti-pandemic measures “in a video conference last week.
“No one is exempt from personal responsibility for decisions made or decisions that are not made in time,” he said.
But Valentin Konovalov, governor of the Khakassia region, has claimed that Russia’s health system has limits, giving a statement on his Instagram profile, while he is infected with COVID-19.
In most regions, those measures do not go beyond masking mandates, limiting the hours of bars and restaurants, ordering the elderly to self-isolate, prohibiting mass public events and requiring employers to have staff working. from home.
But the appetite for a total lockdown to quell rising cases is minimal: A six-week partial coronavirus lockdown in March only added to public frustrations that were long brewing over Russia’s already weakened economy.
Furthermore, Putin delegated the powers to impose virus-related restrictions to regional governors, a move critics saw as an effort to vaccinate himself from further consequences of the pandemic.
But like the Kremlin, the governments of the vast majority of Russian regions have resisted giving orders to close businesses or impose closures, with the exception of the Siberian republic of Buryatia, where last week the governor of the region ordered cafes, restaurants, bars, shopping centers. , cinemas, beauty salons and saunas to close for two weeks.
Putin has such completely centralized power that regional governors are not used to acting independently, said Judy Twigg, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who specializes in global health.
“They don’t want to be blamed for annoying people, imposing unpopular restrictions, and they don’t want to continue taking the blame when things go wrong. It is very useful to have regional governors to blame for what is happening,” he said about the actions of the Russian authorities.
Meanwhile, many Russian regions are sinking under the rising tide of patients.
In Buryatia, the Siberian republic that has imposed the strictest measures in the country, regional authorities imposed a total blockade.
Dr. Tatyana Symbelova told the AP that as the number of patients increased, her hospital kept adding beds in the hospital corridors.
“Without self-isolation and social distancing of people, we cannot handle this situation. In hospital care we have an additional facility, we have up to 30 hospitalized patients per day and complete intensive care,” he said.
(Disclaimer: This story has not been edited by www.republicworld.com and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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