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Olga Duchenko, Corporate and Dispute Resolution Senior Associate at Kachkin & Partners, comments on the compulsory vaccination against covid-19 article.

Olga Istorik the head of the regional Rospotrebnadzor promised that enterprises in the Leningrad region that do not vaccinate their employees by the end of the year would be closed. There are also grounds for such measures in St. Petersburg.

The chief sanitary doctor for the Leningrad region Olga Istorik spoke about the situation with the COVID-19spread in the region on Thursday, October 14.

According to her, the situation is unfavorable. Incidence increase is observed in the region as well as throughout the country. Moreover, 12% of patients suffer from an ailment in the pneumonia form. “Unfortunately, today we do not see any prerequisites to say that the incidence rate will decrease,” noted Olga Istorik.

Meet 20%

At the same time, vaccination is proceeding very slowly. “To date, 35.7% of the population to be vaccinated has been vaccinated with two components. This, of course, is not enough to form (collective. — Ed.) immunity,»- the head of Rospotrebnadzor said.

Tough measures must be taken to stabilize the situation according to her. Olga Istorik recalled that on October 8, 2021, she signed a decree on preventive vaccinations for certain groups of citizens based on epidemiological indicators.

The document prescribes to inoculate at least 80% of employees of all service organizations, industrial and agro-industrial enterprises, civil servants and shift workers working in the Leningrad region with two components of the coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year. For medicine, education and social service organizations, the bar is even higher — 95%.

Those who do not want or cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons must meet the remaining 20% or 5%. This is quite enough, noted Olga Istorik. At the same time, according to her, unvaccinated employees should not be allowed to work directly with clients.

“Almost all groups of the working population should be vaccinated,” said the head of the regional Rospotrebnadzor. — Administrative liability is possible for failure to comply with this resolution of the chief state sanitary doctor… It should be understood that those employers who do not vaccinate the required number of their employees … then suspending the activities of this enterprise will be considered”. At the same time, Olga Istorik hopes that such measures won’t be taken.

City and region

Lawyers interviewed by Delovoy Peterburg confirmed that the threat was quite real and pointed to Art. 6.3 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (violation of legislation in the field of ensuring the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the population). It implies fines for citizens from 15 thousand to 40 thousand rubles, for officials and individual entrepreneurs — from 50 thousand to 150 thousand rubles, for organizations — from 200 thousand to 500 thousand rubles, as well as suspension of activities for 90 days. If it is possible to prove the harm to human health, then the fines will increase to 1 million rubles.

However, these measures of responsibility threaten not only regional entrepreneurs. On October 12, a similar resolution was adopted by the chief sanitary doctor of St. Petersburg, Natalia Bashketova. The text is very similar. There are slight differences in the spheres of activity of organizations (for example, industrial enterprises are not mentioned in St. Petersburg), as well as in terms — the city requires vaccinations to be completed by December 15. The St. Petersburg department of Rospotrebnadzor does not yet say whether they have plans to prosecute violators, but, of course, they are aware of the administrative article.

“Since these are the decisions of the chief sanitary doctors of the constituent entities, vaccination for these industries becomes mandatory,” says Olga Duchenko, Corporate and Dispute Resolution Senior Associate at Kachkin & Partners. The punishment for those who do not fulfill the demand is equally real in the Leningrad region and in St. Petersburg according to her.

MORE COVID DISSIDENTS

Aleksey Dobrynin, Managing Partner of the Pen & Paper Bar Office in St. Petersburg, believes that the rulings can be challenged.

“Compulsory vaccination can only be applied to citizens whose work is associated with a high risk of contracting infectious diseases. A strict list of such works is established by the government of the Russian Federation. In the regional decree, the list of business sectors for which vaccination rates have been established has been significantly expanded, which is highly controversial. It includes workers in trade and catering in particular. There are examples of successful appeals against such decisions. However, they were talking about flu shots. Time will tell how the practice with COVID vaccination will develop. The practice will probably be similar,” the lawyer says.

Svetlana Nerushai, chairman of the committee for the development of small and medium-sized businesses and the consumer market of the Leningrad region, said on Thursday that at present, about 1200 herd immunity passports have been issued in the region. This figure corresponds to the number of organizations that have fulfilled the requirement of Rospotrebnadzor. In total, there are almost 67 thousand legal entities and individual entrepreneurs in the Leningrad region.

The public ombudsman of the Association of Beauty Industry Entrepreneurs Lyalya Sadykova says that in St. Petersburg the situation with vaccinations is worse. “The percentage of vaccinated in the beauty industry in the Leningrad region is higher. They were actively involved. Moreover, in St. Petersburg, it is more difficult, the percentage of vaccinated people is several times less. We have a larger population and more dissidents,”she notes.

Alexander Lobanovsky

The material was published on the website «Delovoy Petersburg» dp.ru Business news 14.10.2021