Russia reports week's minimum growth in COVID-19 cases

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - Russia reported on Wednesday the minimum daily growth in new coronavirus cases in a week.

According to the country's emergency task force, 26,509 infections were registered in Russia for the last 24 hours, taking the overall cases to 2.73 million and active cases to 509,790.

Over the same period, recoveries grew up by 26,490, raising the tally to 2.17 million and fatalities increased by 596 to reach 48,564.

Speaking at a government meeting on Tuesday, Russia's chief sanitary officer Anna Popova said the situation in the spread of the coronavirus has stabilized, the figures remain at their average values for the second week in a row.

But the situation strongly differs depending on the region, as some of the regions have single cases while others barely cope with the influx of patients.

"I would like to note that the achieved stabilization is quite fragile. And today, it depends on each of us to meet the requirements that will allow us to consolidate the current result and go further, to reduce these figures," she said.

Since the beginning of the autumn, the number of cases registering daily in Russia jumped almost six times -- from over 5,000 in September to an average of 27,000 in December.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered on Dec. 2 to start mass vaccination in Russia to stem further growth, with people of social professions assigned to be immunized in the first turn.

Since Dec. 5, the vaccination in all Russian regions has been administered with two Russian coronavirus vaccines -- Sputnik V and EpiVacCorona.