Russia finds Indian variant in Ulyanovsk State University

[kiwibird]

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/...-may-10-a69117

Russia has confirmed 4,888,727 cases of coronavirus and 113,647 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia?s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is above 460,000.

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• Russia on Monday confirmed 8,465 new coronavirus cases and 321 deaths.
• President Vladimir Putin said Monday that some 21.5 million people have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine in Russia so far, or 14.8% of Russia's population of 144.4 million.
• He also said he has tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies four weeks after receiving the second dose of one of Russia's vaccines, with a positivity coefficient of 15.
• A Hungarian lab has confirmed that the first batch of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine sent to Slovakia was satisfactory, Reuters reported Sunday, citing a Slovakia health ministry spokeswoman.

[kiwibird]

https://egyptindependent.com/russia-records-first-cases-of-indian-covid-variant-kommersant/

Russia has recorded its first cases of the variant of COVID-19 first found in India, Kommersant newspaper reported on Thursday, citing authorities in the Ulyanovsk region.

The regional branch of consumer health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said it had recorded 16 cases of the variant among Indian students at Ulyanovsk State University, some 700 kilometers (435 miles) east of Moscow.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-official-covid-statistics-disinformation-demographer/31251097.html

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova acknowledged in December that the country?s data was questionable. She estimated that 81 percent of the 229,700 ?excess deaths? that Russia, according to official numbers, experienced in the first 11 months of 2020 could be attributed to COVID-19. That means the death toll would have been more than 186,000, while the Rosstat statistics agency was reporting a pandemic death total of just 57,000 at the time.
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?It is simply a fact that we do not know how many infections we have had,? Raksha told RFE/RL, adding that methods of estimating the number of infections in the absence of large-scale epidemiological studies are far from ideal. ?It is all just guesswork. I think that in Russia, no less than one-third of the population has had the virus?. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the figure is closer to 40 percent. That is my estimate.?

That would put the total figure for coronavirus infections since the pandemic hit early in 2020 at over 47 million.

[kiwibird]

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-records-first-cases-indian-covid-variant-kommersant-2021-05-13/

Russia's consumer health watchdog on Thursday denied a report that the country had recorded its first cases of the COVID-19 variant first found in India, which some preliminary studies show spreads easily.

The denial from a research institute attached to the Rospotrebnadzor watchdog came after the Kommersant newspaper reported that authorities in Ulyanovsk, a city 700 km (435 miles) east of Moscow, had recorded 16 cases of the variant among Indian students.

"According to specialists, the analysis of the genome of the coronavirus detected in the students does not allow it to be classified as the Indian variant which people are afraid of now," the watchdog said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.