Moscow declares a no-working week to curb spread of Covid-19

The order affects all employees in the Russian capital except for essential workers. Non-essential workers are not required to work from home during the period, but will still retain their salaries.

PRETORIA, June 14 (ANA) – The mayor of Moscow has announced a non-working week in the Russian capital, with non-essential workers told to stay home in an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19, CNN reported on Sunday.

“Over the past week, the situation with the spread of coronavirus has deteriorated sharply. The number of newly diagnosed Covid-19 cases has jumped to last year’s peak values,” Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said.

The decision does not apply to essential workers as well as the military.

Non-essential workers are not required to work from home during the period, but will still retain their salaries, CNN quoted Sobyanin as saying.

In addition to the non-working week, restaurants, cafes, bars, nightclubs and other entertainment venues will be forced to close to costumers from 11 pm to 6 am the following day, with the exception of takeaway services.

According to Al Jazeera, Moscow’s deputy mayor Anastasia Rakova said 78 percent of the 14,000 hospital beds for virus patients in the city were currently occupied.

“In Moscow hospitals working with coronavirus patients there are currently 498 people on ventilators, that’s almost 30 percent more than a week ago,” Rakova said.

She added that over the past two months there had been a significant increase in the number of young patients aged between 18 and 35, Al Jazeera reported.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that an enforcement of mask- and glove-wearing on public transportation and in public places would be bolstered, with violators facing fines of up to US$70.

Russia approved Sputnik V, the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine, for use beginning last August, but authorities have struggled to ramp up inoculation efforts, said the radio, a United States government-funded organisation that broadcasts and reports news, information and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus and the Middle East.

The latest data on real-time tracker Worldometers shows that Russia has had over 5.2 million cases of the coronavirus confirmed to date, with more than 126,000 of these people losing their lives.

– African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Stella Mapenzauswa