World
The Telegraph
Putin announces end to coronavirus lockdown as Russia posts record-high number of new cases
Vladimir Putin told Russia it should go back to work on Tuesday, a day after posting almost the world’s highest daily growth in new coronavirus cases, second only to the United States. Russia has been under lockdown for a little over six weeks, and although the number of new cases has hovered around 10,000 per day for a week now, an addition of new 11,656 cases on Monday broke the country’s record. President Putin in his address to the nation on Monday lauded Russian officials for taking on Covid-19 early, adding more hospital beds and ramping up testing, and said that it was time to end what he dubbed “non-working weeks” on Tuesday. “We cannot be guided by a single blueprint because certain actions in some regions could create unnecessary risks to citizens while in other regions they could lead to pointless restrictions on people and businesses,” Mr Putin said, leaving it up to regional governors to decide when and how to ease the restrictions. Although high in absolute numbers, the speed at which the infection rate is growing is declining, according to Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who said testing has become so widespread that 46 percent of confirmed cases were asymptomatic.
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