Coronavirus: Moscow lifts strict lockdown despite more than 2,000 daily cases

Adherence to regulations was already sketchy by the time of the announcement, but few were expecting such a rapid wind-down

(REUTERS)

Moscow’s daily Covid-19 caseload has persisted around 2,000 for the best part of 3 weeks, some ten times higher than targets for ending the lockdown, and with little apparent downward pressure.

Nonetheless, the city is officially reopening for business, its mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced on Monday.

As of Tuesday, authorities will begin lifting the strict lockdown regulations that have restricted city life for ten weeks. Aside from stay-at-home orders, they include smartphone QR passes for journeys across the city — which in reality were never refused — and compulsory mask-wearing and exercise “timetables” that were being increasingly ignored.

In a pre-recorded video, Mr Sobyanin claimed “big data” showed Muscovites were sticking to the rules. But many believe his sooner-than-anticipated relaxation was, in fact, acceptance of the contrary.

Some reports suggested the Kremlin had forced the mayor's hand. According to Open Media, an opposition website, Mr Sobyanin was asked to open the city ahead of two important dates. The first, Moscow's victory parade, was rescheduled from 9 May and will take place on 24 June. The second, a vote to confirm constitutional changes to allow Vladimir Putin to stay in office until 2036, will be stretched over June 25-July 1.

Mayor Sobyanin announced Moscow's normal business would be resumed in three stages.

Tuesday, 9 June, marks the end of most stay-at-home regulations, with hairdressers and beauty salons also allowed to open. On June 16, dentists, museums, zoos, libraries and restaurants with verandas will open their doors. Gyms, swimming pools, kindergartens, and restaurants with indoor seating areas will follow a week later, in time for the Kremlin’s rescheduled victory parade of 24 June.

The majority of Moscow’s lockdown restrictions came into force at the end of March, though QR-passes for city journey arrived two weeks later.

The first steps towards relaxing the lockdown came 11 days ago, when Mayor Sobyanin introduced complicated "schedules" for outdoor exercise and compulsory mask wearing outside. In the event, both measures were impossible to police and were largely ignored.

Writing on his official blog, Mr Sobyanin attempted to present the quarantine regime as a “victory” for Moscow and his team. The city was de facto returning to its “normal rhythm,” he said. What would now follow was a much vaguer “regime of self-preservation and care of those around us.”

The news of a return towards normal business comes as a relief to tens of thousands of businesses that were unable to work remotely throughout the pandemic. Few have been been offered anything other than scant support from the government. Now, at least, they have been given the chance to fight for their survival.

Alexei Navalny, Russia‘s main opposition leader, also interpreted the news as an opportunity.

“So coronavirus regulations are being cancelled, and on 24 June we have a great big parade,” he wrote on Twitter. “That means on Saturday 27 June we can all meet for a demonstration against Putin“