Russia COVID deaths skyrocket in past week as daily toll tops almost 1,000

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) – Russia's coronavirus death toll skyrocketed in the past week with almost 1,000 people dying of the disease every day.

According to a daily emergency task force report on Thursday, 986 people died of COVID-19 over the past day for a daily record, pushing the nationwide death toll to 220,315.

The daily cases have been on the rise as well, hitting an all-time high as 31,299 people got infected in the last 24 hours, raising the active cases to 734,909 and the overall count to 7.89 million.

Over the same period, recoveries went up by 21,670 to reach 6.93, the report said.

The Russian authorities link the growing number of COVID-19 deaths to the lax vaccination coverage in Russia, where some 43 million people, or 30.71%, have been fully vaccinated – less than half of the figure needed for herd immunity.

Another factor is the onset of winter and the flu-like illnesses that it brings along.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed nearly 4.87 million lives in 192 countries and regions, with more than 239 million cases reported worldwide, according to the US' John Hopkins University.