Russia’s daily coronavirus caseload surpassed 40,000 for the third straight day Friday, with state health officials recording 40,735 new infections, Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported.
“For the third day in a row, the daily COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] incidence surpassed 40,000 cases. In relative terms, this figure increased by 0,47 percent in the past 24 hours,” TASS observed on November 5.
“In particular, over the past day, some 3,363 cases of infection were detected in St. Petersburg, 2,835 COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] cases were registered in the Moscow Region, 1,610 in the Samara Region, 798 in the Voronezh Region, and 792 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region,” the news agency detailed.
Russia, which has a population of roughly 146 million, additionally recorded 1,192 coronavirus-caused deaths on November 5.
Kremlin officials have ordered Moscow to shutter all businesses and non-essential services in the city from October 28 to November 7 in an effort to curb the Russian national capital’s latest coronavirus surge. Moscow is home to roughly 13 million residents.
“Russia has rolled out several homegrown [coronavirus] vaccines including Sputnik V but only about a third of the population is fully innoculated,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported November 1.
“Russia’s single-dose Sputnik Light vaccine produces a strong antibody response among recipients, according to research published Wednesday in [the] leading medical journal The Lancet,” the Moscow Times observed on November 5.
“Sputnik Light is the first dose of Russia’s two-dose Sputnik V vaccine, which is the backbone of Russia’s domestic vaccination campaign and is being sold around the world,” according to the newspaper.
The Moscow Times referred to a study published by the Lancet on November 3 which analyzed the results of phase I and II trials of Sputnik Light. The single-dose Sputnik Light vaccine demonstrated a “good safety profile” and “induces a strong immune response” in recipients, especially in those who have already contracted coronavirus, according to the study’s researchers.
“The vaccine, a single-dose version of the two-dose Sputnik V vaccine unveiled last year, has already entered later phases of studies and is widely used in Russia, but the publication of the early research in a top Western journal is a milestone as Russia moves towards making Sputnik Light its main vaccine for export,” Reuters noted of the vaccine on November 3.
“Sputnik Light might be considered not only for primary vaccination, but also could be useful as an efficient tool for further revaccination or vaccination after previous COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] infection,” according to the Lancet-published study.