MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/. The Russian government has no plans to introduce another lockdown over the rise in COVID-19 cases, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
"This is not under discussion," he said, answering a question on whether another lockdown is possible taking into account the rising number of daily COVID-19 cases in the country.
He pointed out that despite the negative dynamic, the situation right now is different from what happened in the spring of 2020. The Kremlin official stated that the healthcare system had been reequipped to deal with the pandemic. "Right now, our efforts have brought results. The system is ready to withstand the pressure that the epidemic is putting on it," he said.
Peskov said that in the spring, there were not enough means of individual protection, and there was a lack of ventilators as well. "That is, the healthcare infrastructure able to deal with the pandemic was under development. So extreme precaution measures were needed," he explained.
The spokesman stated that "the epidemic lives on and develops," which requires a lot of attention and effort. When asked what can curb the spread of the virus, if not another lockdown, the official said that "this depends on the precautions, on hygiene measures, on certain decisions of regional officials." "You can see that in different regions, the government is taking different decisions, based on special COVID-19 mandate that they received back in the spring. So this system works and helps <…> to approach this danger in a more flexible manner," he added. Peskov stated that the healthcare system meets the challenge of the pandemic despite certain pressure points.