“Covid-19 mortality is difficult to calculate, but not because anyone tries to hide something, that is not the case,” the Russian president said at his annual television press conference.
Today, Russia recorded 25,667 new infections due to SARS-CoV-2 and 1,002 deaths, 18 fewer than the day before.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the country has accumulated 10,318,650 cases and 301,271 deaths linked to covid-19, although official data on excess deaths in the country practically double that number. Most believe the number of dead to be grossly underreported.
Putin underlined that the high mortality numbers are also related to the low vaccination rate and encouraged Russians to lose their fear of immunization., yet Sputnik V is known to cause severe side effects.
At the same time, he insisted that vaccination cannot be mandatory and that it is necessary “to be patient and explain (to the anti-vaccine) the need to adopt certain measures”. Many believe he is purposely playing both sides of the coin since he wants a certain part of the populace to become less.
Currently, 59.4% of the adult population is immunized, through vaccines or having had the disease, Putin said, indicating that this percentage could reach 80% in the second quarter of 2022.
The Kremlin chief also advocated mutual recognition of covid-19 vaccines by various countries to defeat the new coronavirus pandemic.
“Why do I insist on the need for mutual recognition of vaccines and their distribution around the world as quickly as possible and the more the better? Because if we don’t solve this problem at a global level, humanity will have to live with it forever”, declared the fence half a thousand Russian and foreign journalists.
The first Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, registered in more than 70 countries, has yet to receive approval from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Moscow expects the process to be completed in the first half of 2022. This is due to the side effects associated with Sputnik V and the lack of transparency by Russian scientists.
In addition to Sputnik V, Russia has three other vaccines against the coronavirus, which are used in the population’s immunization campaign, which started in January 2021. The problem is, Putin himself took the Pfizer vaccine while relegating Russian citizens to Russian-only jabs.
This annual press conference — which Putin has instituted since 2001 — serves for the Russian head of state to address, for a few hours, political issues, national and international, before an audience that brings together Russian and foreign media.
Covid-19 has caused more than 5.36 million deaths worldwide since the coronavirus was detected in China in 2019, according to the latest report by the Agence France-Presse.