Radiy Khabirov: deadlines for introducing new restrictions may be postponed from June 29 to July 5

The Head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, said in an interview with the Russia 24 TV channel that the region received 509,940 doses of vaccines to prevent coronavirus infection. As of June 23, 475.5 thousand people were vaccinated with the first dose. The vaccine is distributed throughout the republic. Many mobile vaccination points have been arranged in large cities, and queues have begun to form there.

We compared how the vaccination rate had changed since the changes had been made to our High Alert Regime on June 17. During this period, the rate of vaccination in our republic has increased sixfold.

On the morning of June 23, we received 18,000 vaccines, and on June 25, we will receive another 53,000 doses. Therefore, if we maintain the current pace, we will be able to vaccinate at least 150 thousand people a week, the Head of the Republic noted.

We also record an increase in the number of cases within 10-12 percent. Speaking in numbers, if by the end of last week we recorded from 90 to 100 cases, now it is from 100 to 120. This growth is not significant, and it does not worry us too much. Nevertheless, we have increased the bed capacity. Thanks to this, we now have almost 30 percent of free infectious beds in stock. This suits us perfectly.

In terms of the vaccination rate among the regions of Russia, we were somewhere in the middle and thought that we needed to take drastic measures.

Firstly. I told our residents: the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the republic so far allows us to freely say that we do not need to introduce compulsory vaccination.

Our second thesis is to protect people who are responsible for their health from those who are careless. There are facts when a person sneezes and comes to the cinema, and the next day we record an outbreak of the disease, etc. Therefore, from June 29, more severe restrictions under our decree come into force in the republic. A person without a vaccination certificate, medical exemption, or negative PCR test will not be able to receive several services. This applies to catering establishments - cafes, canteens, restaurants with 50 or more seats. This applies to beauty parlors, hairdressing parlors, massage and spa parlors, swimming pools, fitness clubs. These restrictions cover a significant range of people.

At the same time, we met several times with the heads of municipalities, with representatives of the restaurant business, beauty parlors, and fitness clubs. They confirmed that it would be hard.

We expected the rate of vaccination to increase two to three times. I can confidently say that the reality has exceeded our expectations. Vaccination rates have increased sixfold. Therefore, it turned out that the volumes of vaccines that regularly come to us are not enough.

We will be very flexible in this situation. If we still have queues and the health care sector is not doing very well with vaccinations, we will postpone introducing new restrictions from June 29 to July 5. We will take the final decision at a meeting of the republican emergency operations center.