About 2 percent of Moscow’s population is infected with the coronavirus, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced on Saturday, according to the Russian news agency TASS. It concerns about a quarter of a million people.
Sobyanin relies on sampling among a diverse section of the population after testing capacity has been significantly increased in recent days.
In total, 124,054 individuals in the country have tested positive for the coronavirus and 1,222 deaths are known. The Russian capital, in particular, has been hit hard by the pandemic; about half of the confirmed patients are in Moscow.
The most stringent measures against the virus therefore apply in the Russian capital. For example, residents can only go outside with a special digital pass.
Sobyanin states that Moscow is doing well compared to other world cities. “We have succeeded, thanks to discipline and the support of Muscovites for self-isolation measures, to prevent the infection from spreading,” said the mayor.
Many infections, but relatively few deaths
The virus outbreak started more slowly in Russia than in other countries, but last month the number of infections rose to 100,000 in a short time. However, the death toll is far below that of other hard-hit countries.
President Vladimir Putin warns that the outbreak has not yet peaked. There is a warning for new fires if Russians decide to go out en masse during the holiday period in early May.
The lockdown imposed in March will continue until at least 11 May. Earlier this week, Putin announced that he wants to relax a number of measures from mid-May.
Follow the latest developments around the virus in our live blog.
The coronavirus in short
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