MOSCOW, February 25 (Itar-Tass) - The spread of influenza and acute respiratory viral infection (ARVI) has forced the closure for a quarantine of tens of schools and the Amur region, Russian Far East, and the Southern Siberian Altai region.

More than 6,000 people have contracted influenza in the Amur region last week, and the morbidity rate is continuing to grow.

Medics have contains the influenza rate by closing for a quarantine three schools in the settlement of Progress and one in the town of Raichikhinsk.

Classes resumed on Thursday after five to ten-day breaks.

In Blagoveshchensk, 1,700 influenza and ARVI cases have been registered, which was still below an epidemic level.

Some 21 percent of the local population had been vaccinated against influenza, a proportion averting an epidemic.

A quarantine has been imposed in schools of five area of the Altai region and in seven schools in its administrative centre Barnaul.

Fifteen influenza cases have been registered in the city last week and two times more this week.

A total of 1,500 influenza and 23,000 ARVI cases have been listed in the region, warranting quarantine on its whole territory.

Visitation of patients has been banned in hospitals, and patients with fever are handled in outpatient clinics separately from others. All health workers have got orders to wear gauze masks.

Classes began in the city of Ust-Ilimsk in the Irkutsk region on Friday after a stop caused by an influenza epidemic.

The influenza rate has begun to decrease in the city after a two-week quarantine.

However, the epidemiological situation remains tense in nearby Zheleznogorsk, Ust-Ilim, Usolye-Sibirsky and Chunsky districts.

Quarantine has been imposed in all 75 schools of the regional centre Irkutsk.