No more online learning: Foreign students at Russian universities can now enter country if they arrive with negative Covid-19 test

Foreign students can now return to study at Russian universities after they have been tested twice for Covid-19. The announcement comes a week after full-time in-person tuition resumed, following months of distance learning.

Many foreign students have been stuck abroad since the initial coronavirus lockdown in spring 2020, when colleges switched to online teaching and they flew home.  For some, especially those who come from countries with a significant time difference to their university, remote tuition has been incredibly difficult. For others who live in regions with no or prohibitively expensive internet, studying has been nigh on impossible.

Those studying certain subjects, like medicine and engineering, were not offered distance learning at all. In December 2020, Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov recommended that the students concerned take academic leave. In November, he noted that 98,000 foreign students were stuck abroad.

Full-time study at Russian universities resumed on February 8.

Now, health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has opted to let those enrolled at Russian universities into the country. Students must undergo a PCR test no earlier than three calendar days before arrival in the country, and take a second within 72 hours after entry. Until the second result is confirmed negative, the student must remain in isolation.

“Medical documents confirming a negative test result for Covid-19 by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), obtained before and after entering Russian territory, can be provided in Russian or English,” the government agency noted.

In the 2019/20 academic year, 297,993 foreign students studied in Russia.

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