Russia hits new all-time high coronavirus death toll

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - Russia on Wednesday registered another record number of daily coronavirus fatalities -- 1,247 people died over the past day, pushing the overall count to 259,084.

Over the same period, 36,626 people contracted the virus, taking Russia's caseload to 9.18 million and active cases to 1.04 million, the country's emergency task force said in a daily report.

Meanwhile, 36,388 patients healed of COVID-19 since Tuesday, bringing the total recoveries to 7.88 million.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed more than 5.1 million lives in 192 countries and regions, with over 254.4 million cases reported worldwide, according to the US' Johns Hopkins University.