After reaching western Europe, the Omicron wave is about to hit Russia head-on. It is already there and could in a maximum of ten days overwhelm a country whose health system is already strained. All day Tuesday, officials have followed one another on television to sound the alarm, with figures and statements all as dark as each other.
With our correspondent in Moscow, Anissa El Jabri
This is a figure that gives the authorities a cold sweat: infections tripled during the holiday season in Russia. Already at their highest with more than 40,000 infections recorded per day, daily cases could very quickly exceed 100,000. Only 305 cases of Omicron have been recorded in this country of more than 140 million inhabitants, but it is it is this variant which is in question, says the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin.
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A very low vaccination rate
The picture is also particularly gloomy for the capital, with a spectacular increase of 67%. Sergei Sobyanin even added that “ it is quite possible that we are facing a worse situation than in previous waves “. Some regions still require a health pass for public places, but the Russian capital does not. And the idea of national restrictions is not on the agenda in this country where less than one inhabitant in two is vaccinated. The Prime Minister has therefore placed the country’s hospitals and clinics on alert.
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