‘Better call Singapore!’, Kremlin suggests, as scientists in Asian city-state predict exact day of Covid-19 ending in Russia

With no end in sight for Russia’s coronavirus crisis, Singaporean academics have finally put a date on it: August 19. The Kremlin remains unconvinced, however, believing it’s too early to make such a precise prediction.

According to scientists at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, the coronavirus epidemic in Russia will come to an end in the middle of August. The latest prediction comes after new data on Covid-19, with the same experts having previously suggested an end-date of June 20.

Using a mathematical model, the Singaporean scientists have predicted the final days of coronavirus in countries all around the world, including the USA (September 9), the UK (August 22), and Germany (August 6). According to their forecasts, the global pandemic should be over by December 1. According to the Kremlin, predicting an exact day simply cannot be done.

“We are guided by a clear understanding that it is impossible to state the end date of the epidemic. We recommend calling Singapore,” said Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s press secretary.

On April 24, Veronika Skvortsova, the head of Russia’s Federal Biomedical Agency, predicted that Russia would reach its Covid-19 plateau in the following week.

“We really hope that next week we will reach a plateau, we will hold out on it for a while and go down. I would like it to be that way,” she said.

Earlier, Skvortsova had projected that the plateau would be reached by April 20, but has since revised her forecast – showing just how unpredictable an epidemic can be.

Of course, on-the-ground reality can differ greatly from a mathematical model. With so much depending on changes in government policy, and on the effectiveness of measures taken, it would be a miracle for any model to predict an end-date so accurately.

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