Moscow residents to don masks, gloves next week

Moscow residents will be required to wear masks and gloves when using public transit and visiting public spaces starting Tuesday because of the coronavirus.

The announcement by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin comes after the decision to reopen industrial plants and construction sites in the capital on that same day.

Allowing more people to work, we understand that it will increase passenger traffic on the transport, increase the number of people who come in contact with each other, and it somehow needs to be compensated for, Sobyanin said Thursday in an interview on the state-run Rossia 24 TV channel.

He added that as many as 2.5% of Moscow's 12.7 million population -- some 300,000 people -- may be infected with the coronavirus.

Moscow has so far registered almost 93,000 confirmed cases of the virus -- more than half of the country's total of 177,000 reported infections.