Russian employees who refuse to get new crown vaccine face unpaid leave

On June 19, Russian Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov announced that employees of companies in regions where vaccination against the new crown is mandatory may face unpaid leave if they refuse to be vaccinated.

Anton Kotyakov said, “If the health department of a region requires certain categories of employees to be vaccinated, those who do not receive the vaccine may be suspended from work” until the end of the mandatory vaccination decree.

Faced with a surge in cases, the city of Moscow and its regions were the first in Russia this week to declare mandatory vaccinations for service industry employees. Since then, seven other administrative regions, including St. Petersburg, have taken similar measures. Moscow, which had about 3,000 new confirmations in a single day two weeks ago, has seen a spike in consecutive days, dropping by Sunday, but still with more than 8,000 people infected in a 24-hour period. Local authorities said the spike was caused by the Indian Delta variant, with 90% of new patients infected with the virus. For St. Petersburg, the number of new cases exceeded 1,000 in a 24-hour period for the first time since late February. According to the Russian Gogov website, only 13 percent of Russians have been vaccinated against New Crown since last December.