Alert in Saint Petersburg, headquarters of the Eurocup, for record of deaths by Covid-19

The country, currently affected by the spread of the contagious Delta variant, has an official death toll of 132,683 since the start of the pandemic, the sixth worst in the world.

Local media in St. Petersburg published photos and videos of thousands of people concentrated in the streets during the end of the school year celebrations, during which sanitary measures were poorly respected.

The city has also hosted six matches of the European Football Championship and will host a final quarter-final next Friday, all with stands at 50% capacity., which represents more than 26,000 viewers.

Dozens of Finnish fans contracted the virus after watching the game between their national team and Belgium earlier in the week.

A few days ago, the city announced a ban on selling food in Euro Cup fan zones.

The rise in infections and deaths comes as Russian authorities try to convince their skeptical citizens to get vaccinated.

“To stop the pandemic, one thing is needed: rapid and large-scale vaccinations. No one has invented another solution”, said the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin on state television this Saturday.

“To solve this problem, you have to be vaccinated or confined,” he said in another statement, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

Only 21.2 million of the 146 million Russian citizens received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to Friday’s report from the Gogov site, which, for lack of official statistics at the national level, adds data provided by the regions and by the media.