Putin announces plans to get coronavirus vaccination on March 23

Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to get vaccinated against the coronavirus on Tuesday, March 23. “By the way, I myself intend to do it tomorrow,” Putin said during a meeting on vaccination issues on Monday.

In addition to underscoring that vaccination is voluntary for everyone, Putin said that 4.3 million people in Russia (2.9 percent of the population) have been vaccinated against COVID-19 fully and that 6.3 million people (4.3 percent of the population) have received their first vaccine dose.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov specified that the president’s immunization won’t be a public event. 

Russia’s universal vaccination campaign against COVID-19 began on January 18, 2021. However, in terms of the total number of vaccinations, the country lags significantly behind the United States, the UK, and the European Union, where they are only immunizing certain categories of the population.