Between firmness and hesitation: How Russia is responding to the COVID19 challenge / Viktoriia Ivanchenko

Viktoriia Ivanchenko is an analyst at the Institute of Integration Development of the Russian Foreign Trade Academy, expert of PICREADI and Russian International Affairs Council.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought a lot of changes to our normal lives worldwide. Now the entire world faces a heavy challenge of overcoming the global health crisis -  just before it comes very soon to new economic and financial crises and the tasks of the social and global connectivity recovery. What are the limits and how great will consequences be?

© Григорий Сысоев, РИА Новости, 2020

Russia has been a country that has now seen the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and most experts and officials say that the peak will come in May. At the same time nobody can forecast how painful the coming peak will be for the Russian society and economy. The whole country is mobilized and tries to mitigate the effects with the package of preventive measures in social and economic spheres.

The general situation seems quite stable: the public health system is not too much overloaded, lethality grade is really low (0,7–0,8%). 40-45% of tested infected people do not have any symptoms at all. Polls show that the notable part of Russians are afraid to get infected so they tend to behave quite responsibly and cautiously.

Having said that, the society is pretty critical because of the lack of trust in media and governmental decisions and controversial recommendations of the World Health Organization. People in those regions where the number of the infected cases is much lower are annoyed with the tough restrictions. We have arrived in a time where nobody in the world can give clear answers and give right prescriptions what to do -even science still can’t.

Gradual measures taken by the Russian government could play a role of sedative for the society. The measures get stricter only with the rise of danger. But, unfortunately, they can’t help economic losses, closure of small and medium businesses and rise in unemployment that inevitably makes the society more stressed and tense. And the Russian government is still far from the discussion of lifting the lockdown measures.

Read more in the source: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/between-firmness-and-hesitation-how-russia-is-responding-to-the-covid19-challenge-65237/?fbclid=IwAR3ASK0UpRZ6fdjZsR_-dCtueq0ZlNHres3RwIacatBQj6zu50F4CKILsbE