Onishchenko: “Russia has fallen behind the scientifically based vaccination schedule”
The sharp increase in the number of Covid cases in Russia is explained by the insufficient number of vaccinated people.
State Duma deputy and former chief sanitary doctor of Russia Gennady Onishchenko stated this in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent, commenting on the data showing that more than 100 people died from COVID-19 in Moscow in one day for the first time.
“I would recommend that you start not with these numbers, but with the numbers of sick people. There are really a lot of them, the numbers are high for all the periods that we had. And the main reason is that today we are behind the required, scientifically based vaccination schedules,” says Onishchenko.
He emphasizes that first of all, people working in trade, catering and other service sectors need to be vaccinated.
“Since it is “much easier” for them to get sick than everyone else, they should not be sources of transmission of this infection to other people, their consumers. So, representatives of these categories did not get vaccinated on time. And this could well be one of the main reasons why the morbidity rate, and then the mortality rate, began to rise in our country. And today we have an explosive increase in the incidence of Covid in a number of regions,” noted the former chief sanitary doctor of Russia.
According to him, the numbers of cases are unreasonably high also because in Russia we spent a long time arguing about whether to vaccinate or not to vaccinate.
“Now, thank God, the situation is turning in the right direction. And now the main task is to ensure an uninterrupted supply of vaccines to the regions,” says the publication’s interlocutor.
He also adds that the bad statistics will begin to change as the number of people vaccinated increases.
“We now have supposedly 20 million covered by the first application (well, let there be 12-13 who have fully completed vaccination). This is not enough. China already has a billion vaccinated people. Western countries already have more than half (in particular, England - there are about 70 or 80 million vaccinated people, Germany has good numbers). In the United States, about 180 million people have been vaccinated out of a population of 320 million. They have good potential. And, as you can see, today in the States the severity of the pandemic is gradually decreasing, although at first they had a huge failure, and even India has not yet overtaken them in the number of cases,” Onishchenko noted.
Onishchenko: "Russia has fallen behind scientifically-based vaccination deadlines"