Russia offers vaccines to all as UK quarantines travellers

MOSCOW: Russia on Monday began offering its coronavirus vaccine to any citizen that wants one, while Britain enforced a quarantine on incoming travellers as it battles a new Covid-19 variant.

The UK also joined France in widening inoculations to all elderly people, after Brazil and India -- two of the worst-affected countries -- got their schemes underway over the weekend, with a total of 40 million doses so far injected worldwide.

At a clinic doling out the homegrown Sputnik V jab in Vladivostok, eastern Russia, Valery Grishin told AFP it was the duty of every Russian to get the vaccine so as "not to infect others".

Fearing for its battered economy, Russia has resisted reimposing a nationwide lockdown despite recording the fourth-highest case total in the world, at 3.5 million -- betting instead on mass vaccination to throttle the pandemic.

But while the vaccine is widely available in Moscow, many regions have reported receiving only between 5,000 and 15,000 doses so far in the country of 146 million people.

After residents of retirement homes and health workers, France is looking to cover all over-75s, hoping to issue up to four million doses by February.

Britain meanwhile extended its own campaign to people over the age of 70, while Belgium began injecting health workers, adding to a scheme targeting care home residents.

Growing concerns over different strains of the virus have prompted governments to tighten curbs, hoping to stem a global death toll that has already crossed two million since the pandemic first emerged in China a year ago.

Britain imposed a 10-day isolation on all arrivals, who will have to provide a negative Covid test taken at most 72 hours before departure or be banned from entering the country.

New strains of the virus, which first emerged in Britain, South Africa and Brazil and have since been detected elsewhere, have set off alarm bells.

Curbs on travel have also had a harsh economic impact, with cross-Channel rail operator Eurostar asking for British state support like that already offered to airlines as traffic has slowed to a trickle.

"Without additional funding from government there is a real risk to the survival of Eurostar," the company said in a statement.