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Russian regions are continuing to implement COVID-19 vaccination mandates for their older population, the Associated Press reported.
Komi and Omsk are the most recent to mandate vaccines for those 60 and up. Komi's mandate requires every citizen in that age group to be fully vaccinated by February 1. In Siberia, Omsk is requiring the same age group to get their first vaccination by December 24 and their second by January 15. The regions join others such as St. Petersburg, Lipetsk and Kurgan in mandating vaccination for age 60 and over.
It is not the only age group in Russia that is being required to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Some regions are mandating essential workers to get vaccinated, although AP reported that it is in place only for "certain categories" of workers.
The mandates come as Russia continues struggling to get its population vaccinated. Only about 40 percent of the nearly 146 million people are fully vaccinated. The country also might record its first cases of the Omicron variant, as it is currently waiting on results from two people who tested positive for COVID-19 after traveling to South Africa.
Russia's coronavirus task force reported 32,930 new cases on Friday along with 1,217 deaths. In total, over 9.7 million cases and 278,857 deaths have been recorded in the country since the beginning of the pandemic.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Russia has struggled to get cases down amid low vaccination rates and poor compliance with public health measures.
The country approved a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine—Sputnik V—months before most of the world.
The two have been hospitalized, Russia's public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement. It wasn't immediately clear whether their condition required hospital care or they were admitted to a hospital for additional testing because of the variant.
Russia restricted entry for all foreigners traveling from countries in southern Africa and required all Russian nationals returning from South Africa or neighboring countries as of Thursday to quarantine for 14 days because of the omicron variant, which was first reported by scientists in South Africa.
Much remains unknown about the new variant, including whether it is more contagious, as some health authorities suspect, whether it makes people more seriously ill, and whether it can thwart coronavirus vaccines.
Some experts believe the true figure is even higher. Reports by Russia's statistical service, Rosstat, that tally coronavirus-linked deaths retroactively reveal much higher mortality. The reports say 462,000 people with COVID-19 died between April of 2020 and September of this year.
Russian officials have said the task force only includes deaths for which COVID-19 was the main cause, and uses data from medical facilities. Rosstat uses wider criteria for counting virus-related deaths and takes its numbers from civil registry offices where registering a death is finalized.
