From empty to vacant: QR-codes have not made the restaurant business in Moscow safer

Novye Izvestia's special correspondent walked through the fast food establishments at the "foot" of the Kremlin and found crowds of people waiting for food at the "spare" entrances.

Yulia Suntsova

QR-code compulsion at popular fast food restaurants didn't seem to work. Jokes on this occasion have already begun to appear.

- Your QR-code, pls?

- Here.

- PCR test?

- You are welcome.

- Antibody test?

- Please.

- Application for revaccination.

- Here is the original and a copy.

- Coupon for revaccination.

- Here it is, pinned to the statement.

- Come on in. What do you want?

- BigMac and cola, please.

But foreign franchise networks have completely different organizational and material capabilities to ensure sanitary measures, to be sure about our barely surviving restaurateurs.

Special correspondent of Novye Izvestia tried to enter MacDonalds and KFC on Okhotny Ryad. Without a OR-code, it's really impossible to enter. The main entrance doors are opened to the vaccinated, but there are almost no visitors. On a Friday night, about half an hour while we were observing the situation, only one woman walked in.

But when asked how to eat now, employees confidently point to the "emergency exit". Five meters from the main entrance there is an express check-out window.

The queues here are long and dense, several dozen people. At the same time, customers hungry for the coveted burger huddle together for 30-40 minutes, or even an hour. First, standing shoulder to shoulder in line to pay. Then - even more crowded crowded not far from the same window with coupons in their hands.

"The most valuable thing is health". “Your health and safety are our priority”, “We roast and serve our chicken absolutely contactless. Your hands will be the first to touch the finished meal", "We keep social distance", “All employees undergo mandatory trainings to ensure your safety”, - fresh notifications are posted on the entrance lobbies.

At the expense of social distance, you see the opposite, we were convinced of this with our own eyes. And you can definitely say that you have much less contact with people when you order your lunch inside the hall in the machine, and then the waiter brings it to you at your personal table, fenced off from others by glass . This was exactly the case until recently, when the mayor's office introduced QR codes.

The most disciplined participants in the quest from the mayor's office are workers from Central Asia, who became the first visitors to the COVID-free zones, and the rest of the non-progressive natives have to be content with lunches on the hoods, political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov comments on the situation, describing his trip to lunch this way:

- Almost all the COVID free zones I visited were empty. People huddle on the verandas, so there is a sorely lack of space, and it's hot under the scorching sun. So I took a bite on the hood of a car parked in the shade. This additional service cost me only an extra 380 rubles. But I am not sorry, after all, for a good deed - improvement.

The result obtained after the introduction of QR codes is no different from what it was before. The crowds of visitors to fast food restaurants simply shifted from one point to another and created additional inconveniences for each other. We asked the experts what is the point of this imitation?

Nikolay Dubinin, sanitary doctor:

- Our restaurant business is now in an artificially oppressed state, and it is clear that it clings to any attempts to survive. But all the restrictions he stoically endures have led to side effects. Restaurant food with the transition to delivery loses quality and increases in price. What people used to eat in a good environment, well served and hot, is now offered to be taken cold and in a box, and even at an increased cost. Because of this, a large influx of visitors is now experiencing the fast food of foreign chains, because it is a high and fast quality of service and it is a standardized, stable, familiar product that is understood in detail.

As a result, we see long queues here, the infrastructure of even these well-known networks did not have time to rebuild to accommodate large queues lined up at the windows for delivery with them. The result is that people are jostling, people create a threat of infection.

Obviously, security measures in these queues are not lined up - markings, warnings about the need to observe social distance. But this is unacceptable in such a critical situation as it is now, and the current requirements of Rospotrebnadzor would consider everything described as terrible violations.

Coronavirus is transmitted by airborne droplets and aerosol, the distance between people less than 1.5-2 meters poses a direct threat of infection, regardless of whether there are people in the room or on the street. Crowds, crowds - at least, a very conducive factor to this.

Maria Lagarkova, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Cell Biology Laboratory of the Federal State Budgetary Institution FSCC FHM FNBA, Professor of the Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov:

- Actually, a little late and awkwardly and through... not in the most optimal way, our healthcare is trying to get people to get vaccinated. What they will receive in the queue for express delivery without having a QR code is nothing more and nothing less than what they will receive in the metro, driving without masks, at airports, where they are leaving now for rest, and in many other places. Now, on Tuesday evening, I am passing through the Park of Culture - making my way through the crowds of people. Our people are moving towards where they are, unfortunately, not without the help of the media, irresponsible statements by anti-vaccination doctors, who, by the way, in other countries, for such statements, would be forever deprived of the right to work. The degree of horror of what is happening is still not clear to those who ignore even the simplest masks.

QR codes and all sorts of other requirements for business and employers mean that officials shift their responsibility for the success of vaccination to a lower link. What can I say? Sadly, this is the last of the government's remaining ways to get people to vaccinate. But the situation now is such that, again, unfortunately, any methods that would give an extra + 10% of the vaccinated are justified.

Alexey Agranovsky, Professor of the Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Doctor of Biological Sciences:

- In an epidemic, it is generally very difficult to organize everything perfectly, and neither God, nor the king, nor the hero can do this, no bosses at the head of our God-saved Fatherland will save us. Attempts are being made - sometimes successful, at times - failures, and in any case there will always be someone who will scold the initiators for violating human rights. Nobody says that everything has been worked out to the end. But the story of doors and QR codes is just one miss among many others.

The most important story for this day is a clear understanding of what exactly I, you and all our compatriots can do for each other, and the only effective solution and way out, in my opinion, is a vaccine. All other effects are secondary, as Robert Sheckley wrote in Mind Exchange.

Much is lacking in organization. There is a catastrophic lack of an official website where truthful statistics about the COVID-19 disease would be accessible and updated daily. We still do not have official answers to questions about how many people have been vaccinated today, how many have been ill and vaccinated, how many people have become infected after vaccination or previously transferred COVID-19 and what strain, what are the differences in the course of the disease in vaccinated and unvaccinated, how many people in these categories are hospitalized or are at home. Answers to these and other questions, clear statistics are the most important thing now.