Here’s a map of Moscow’s coronavirus cases to date:

Notice something interesting?

Although it’s not a particularly clean demarcation, there is a higher density towards the center and south-west, while there’s much fewer cases in the prole-ish south-east.

This corresponds with:

Why? Well, they’re still overwhelmingly foreign cases, with no hard evidence of sustained community-based transmission to date.

***

There are 495 cases in Russia now, up 57 from the previous day, and a decline from the local peak of 71 new cases observed yesterday.

The optimistic interpretation goes as follows:

Russia locked down its borders on March 18, and since symptoms take a median of 5 days to manifest, new cases should peak within this general period.

Several clinics are now testing for COVID-19, whereas before it was just the Vector state lab.

Tests have become more sensitive, and results are delivered faster.

This would suggest that the current spurt is overwhelmingly driven by quarantined people from abroad getting tested, as well as a “catching up” effect due to the improvements in testing.

The pessimistic interpretation, I suppose, is that there is an undetected shadow epidemic in its early stages already growing in Moscow or elsewhere. I suppose we’ll see by ~April 1.

In other news: