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Moscow’s mayor on Saturday ordered a week off for some workplaces and imposed restrictions on many businesses to fight coronavirus infections that have more than doubled in the past week.The national coronavirus task force reported 6,701 new confirmed cases in Moscow, compared with 2,936 on June 6. Nationally, the daily tally has spiked by nearly half over the past week, to 13,510.After several weeks of lockdown as the pandemic spread in the spring of 2020, the Russian capital eased restrictions and did not reimpose any during subsequent case increases. But because of the recent sharp rise, “it is impossible not to react to such a situation,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.He ordered enterprises that do not normally work on weekends to remain closed for the next week while continuing to pay employees. Food courts and children’s play areas in shopping centers also are to close for a week beginning Sunday, and restaurants and bars must limit their service.People wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus ride a subway car in Moscow, Russia, June 10, 2021.Mask, glove enforcementEarlier in the week, city authorities said enforcement of mask- and glove-wearing requirements on mass transit, in stores and in other public places would be strengthened and that violators could face fines of up to 5,000 rubles ($70).Although Russia was the first country to deploy a coronavirus vaccine, its use has been relatively low; many Russians are reluctant to get vaccinated.President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said 18 million Russians had received the vaccine — about 12% of the population.For the entire pandemic period, the task force has reported nearly 5.2 million infections in the country of about 146 million people and 126,000 deaths. However, a report from Russian state statistics agency Rosstat on Friday found more than 144,000 virus-related deaths last year alone.The statistics agency, unlike the task force, counts fatalities in which coronavirus infection was present or suspected but was not the main cause of death.The agency’s report found about 340,000 more people died in 2020 than in 2019; it did not give details of the causes of the higher year-on-year death toll.The higher death toll and a lower number of births combined to make an overall population decline of 702,000, about twice the decline in 2019, Rosstat said.
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Concerns about the safety of the COVID vaccine are common especially when it comes to inoculating very young children. A new study suggests that some moms may be passing along antibodies to their infants. VOA’s Dilge Timocin has more.  Camera: Tezcan Taskiran
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Top U.S. and Chinese diplomats appear to have had another sharply worded exchange, with Beijing saying it told the U.S. to cease interfering in its internal affairs and accusing Washington of politicizing the search for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.Senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a phone call Friday that revealed wide divisions in several contentious areas, including the curtailing of freedoms in Hong Kong and the mass detention of Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region.Calls for a more thorough investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are particularly sensitive for China because of suggestions that it might have have escaped from a laboratory in the central city of Wuhan, where cases were first discovered.Yang said China was “gravely concerned” over what he called “absurd” stories that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab.China “firmly opposes any despicable acts that use the epidemic as an excuse to slander China and to shift blames,” Yang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.“Some people in the United States have fabricated and peddled absurd stories claiming Wuhan lab leak, which China is gravely concerned about,” Yang said. “China urges the United States to respect facts and science, refrain from politicizing COVID-19 origin tracing and concentrate on international anti-pandemic cooperation.”The State Department said Blinken “stressed the importance of cooperation and transparency regarding the origin of the virus, including the need for (World Health Organization) Phase 2 expert-led studies in China.”The U.S. and others have accused China of failing to provide the raw data and access to sites that would allow a more thorough investigation into where the virus sprung from and how it initially spread.Equally contentious were the issues of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and accusations that China has arbitrarily detained two Canadian citizens in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of an executive of Chinese communications technology giant Huawei, who is wanted by U.S. law enforcement.The U.S. has “fabricated various lies about Xinjiang in an attempt to sabotage the stability and unity in Xinjiang, which confuse right and wrong and are extremely absurd. China is firmly opposed to such actions,” Yang said.FILE – People walk by a billboard reading ‘All people participate in building a line of defense against the epidemic, please get the vaccine in time’ in Beijing, May 24, 2021.“Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs,” and those found in violation of a sweeping national security law imposed on the former British colony “must be punished,” Yang said.Blinken, on the other hand, underscored U.S. concern over the deterioration of democratic norms in Hong Kong and the ongoing “genocide and crimes against humanity against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” the State Department said.He also urged Beijing to ease pressure against Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy China claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary.According to Xinhua, Yang said Taiwan involves China’s “core interests” and that Beijing “firmly defends its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”The tone of the phone call seemed to echo contentious talks in March in Alaska, when the sides traded sharp and unusually public barbs over vastly different views of each other and the world in their first face-to-face meeting since President Joe Biden took office.At that meeting, the U.S. accused the Chinese delegation of “grandstanding,” while Beijing fired back, saying there was a “strong smell of gunpowder and drama” that was entirely the fault of the Americans.Relations between them have deteriorated to their lowest level in decades, with the Biden administration showing no signs of deviating from the established U.S. hardline against China over trade, technology, human rights and China’s claim to the South China Sea.Beijing, meanwhile, has fought back doggedly against what it sees as attempts to smear its reputation and restrain its development.On Thursday, its ceremonial legislature passed a law to retaliate against sanctions imposed on Chinese politicians and organizations, threatening to deny entry to and freeze the Chinese assets of anyone who formulates or implements such measures, potentially placing new pressure on foreign companies operating in the country.  
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COVID-19 vaccines for children are moving closer to availability, but access remains limited.Moderna announced late this week that it was submitting its vaccine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization in children age 12 and older.The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has already received the go-ahead for this age group.The companies are testing their vaccines on younger age groups, down to 6 months. Results are expected in the fall.The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are moving into pediatric populations ahead of those from Johnson & Johnson and the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca partnership.The AstraZeneca vaccine makes up the bulk of the doses delivered through COVAX, the WHO-backed program delivering shots to low- and middle-income countries.Rare but serious blood clotting issues have slowed down the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. A study this week in the journal Nature Medicine found a rate of about one case per every 100,000 people who received the AstraZeneca shot.The vaccine’s benefits still far outweigh the risks, according to regulators in the United States and Europe and the World Health Organization. These kinds of blood clots can also be a complication of COVID-19, the Scottish study noted. They are also a rare side effect of other common vaccines, including those for influenza, hepatitis B and measles, mumps and rubella.As to whether this side effect will affect children, “we don’t yet know the answer to that,” said William Moss, head of the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center. “It’s possible either way. The risk could be very similar to (that for) older adults, or the risk could be decreased.”Oxford said it has stopped enrolling children in its vaccine trial while it evaluates the blood clotting issues.Though the delay will push back availability for children, the WHO says children are not the top priority for vaccination currently.”Though they can get infected with COVID-19 and they can transmit the infection to others, they are at much lower risk of getting severe disease compared to older adults,” WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told the organization’s Science in 5 podcast.”Except for (the) very few children who are at a high risk, (they are) not considered to be a high priority right now because we have limited doses of vaccines. We need to use them to protect the most vulnerable,” including health care workers and the elderly, she said.The G-7 group of industrialized countries this week pledged 1 billion doses to global vaccination efforts, including 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech shots donated by the United States.That falls billions of doses short of what is needed, critics note, and most of the doses are not expected until next year.While the Pfizer and Moderna shots have not had the same blood clotting issues as the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, officials have raised concerns about their possible link to swelling of the heart or the heart’s lining.A few more patients than expected developed this side effect after receiving these vaccines, according to reports from the United States and Israel, but regulators have not determined whether the vaccines are responsible.Most recovered without incident.  
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