The number of daily hospitalizations of coronavirus patients in Moscow is low enough for the city healthcare system to cope with, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
"Today, we are keeping at practically the same level - a small growth, a small decline, [the situation] has stabilized at the level that I would not call very low, but rather acceptable, the level that the healthcare system copes with pretty well," Sobyanin told Vesti news program on Rossiya-1 television.
Specialists don’t rule out a new surge in COVID-19 cases. "Of course, everybody has such fears, and specialists say that nothing is ruled out," the mayor said, adding that many Moscow residents had been vaccinated.
The mayor also said that the share of infections has grown among older people, who are more at risk. "Today, we are saving many of them in hospitals, but not everybody can be saved," the mayor stressed.
Sobyanin reiterated that elderly people had been advised to stay more at home, or at their country houses, to limit contacts. "Fears of the vaccination and the real risk to fall ill must be assessed. I think that the risk is 100% if you have not been vaccinated," TASS cited him as saying.
Moscow is the hardest hit among the Russian regions as to the number of coronavirus infections. Overall, 1,017,309 people have been infected since the start of the epidemic, including 1,787 in the past day. As many as 973,122 patients have recovered and 16,337 have died.