Russia posted a record 852 deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday amid a spike in cases in Moscow and sluggish vaccination uptake.
The government’s Covid-19 information center also reported 21,559 new cases over the past 24 hours.
Russia now has the fifth-largest number of recorded Covid-19 cases in the world and the highest death toll in Europe.
Moscow has emerged as a hub for new infections, and the city’s Covid response center said that week that hospitalizations in the Russian capital rose 15% compared with the previous week and that new infections have risen by 24%. The Delta variant accounted for 100% of all new infections.
Earlier on Tuesday, Andrey Isaev, the head of Russia’s Scientific Center for Molecular Genetic Research, told the state-run Tass news agency that Russia might reach herd immunity from Covid-19 by this winter despite only 28% of the country being fully vaccinated.
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