Russia's capital, Moscow, will go into a 10-day lockdown starting next week as new Covid-19 cases and deaths from the disease soar. The lockdown, which will not begin until Thursday, October 28, comes as Russian hospitals struggle with a terrifying surge of mostly unvaccinated patients.
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Russia reported 35,416 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University, a new record since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. The country also recorded 1,011 new deaths, close to the all-time daily record for the country.
Russia has suffered from low vaccination rates, with just 32.9% of the country's population fully vaccinated. As the Associated Press noted in an article this week, the vast majority of people hospitalized in intensive care units with Covid-19 are those who are unvaccinated, according to what public health experts around the world are seeing.
Despite a decline in the number of Covid-19 cases in the US over the past two weeks, the pandemic remains a very serious issue for Americans. The US reported 81,987 new cases of the disease on Thursday and 1,873 new deaths.
The U.S. has a vaccination rate of just 57.6%, far lower than other wealthy countries, according to Johns Hopkins University. Compare that to countries like Canada (73.3%), Spain (78.4%), France (67.5%) and the United Kingdom (67.6%).
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Even China, the country where Covid-19 originated, has a much higher vaccination rate than the US with 74.9% of the population fully vaccinated and still follows a covid-zero policy. China’s National Health Commission reported just 28 new Covid-19 cases on Friday. And while many New Cold Warriors in the West may be naturally skeptical of China’s Covid-19 claims, there is one thing China is doing that may actually be keeping infections low in the country: Mass testing.
No other country in the world does mass testing of entire cities when cases appear.
Information source: gizmodo.com
