Russia’s Watcom shopping index, providing a measure of foot traffic in Moscow’s leading malls in real time, stopped falling in the last weeks of November but remains down by a half on the same week a year ago.

Retail turnover has been hit hard this year by the coronacrisis and summer lockdowns. But foot traffic recovered quickly after the movement restrictions were lifted at the end of the summer, regaining almost all the ground lost and giving the economy a welcome consumption-led boost in the process.

However, as the second wave of infections gathered pace in September the population began to avoid public spaces again and as the chart clearly shows, foot traffic began to decline once more.

Infections in November rose to a new all-time high of some 25,000 new cases per day – twice the level of infections in the first wave – but foot traffic fell much less steeply as the authorities demurred from imposing a new lockdown, calculating that the damage done to the economy outweighed the danger to public health.

More recently, the Watcom index has stabilised in the last few weeks, albeit at the lowest levels seen since the index was launched in 2014.

The index was at 363 in week 48 (November 23-28), up slightly from its recent nadir of 356 the week before in the midst of the second wave; however, the index has been bouncing around between 355 and 365 for a month and half now and shows no strong trend in either direction.

The population are now waiting for the wider rollout of mass inoculations with the Sputnik V vaccine, launched on December 7 with the first 2mn people inoculated, mainly health workers and teachers. While there are unanswered questions over the availability of the vaccine and its effectiveness, clearly the production of it is being ramped up and so far there have been no serious problems reported from trials. The authorities claim Sputnik V has 95% efficacy.

While the next few weeks over the holiday period – which in Russia runs to the Gregorian calendar’s “old New Year” on January 14 – will be tough, as the vaccinations take hold infections rates will diminish and the economy should bounce back as a year’s worth of pent-up demand is released – as bne IntelliNews reported with this month’s “Brighter days ahead” cover story.

The current round of inoculations will take at least a month to show up in the statistics, as the two required jabs need to be 21 days apart and immunity from the antibodies created is only effective two weeks after the second shot.

The current levels of foot traffic remain depressed, down by 51% from the levels of foot traffic in week 48 a year ago – one of the best years for retail foot traffic in the last four years as Russia’s economy finally began to emerge from a five-year recession and real income growth went back into the black for the first time since the economic shock in 2014.