The city of Moscow announced on Sunday a record number of deaths from the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, a sign of a situation that continues to deteriorate in Russia, hit hard by the Delta variant.
According to official data, the capital of Russia recorded 144 deaths in 24 hours, the worst toll since the start of the pandemic.
On Saturday, it was the country's second city, St. Petersburg, which posted a record death toll with 107 dead.
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Across the country, 20,538 new people have been infected for a total of more than 5.4 million cases since the start of the pandemic.
And 599 people have died, out of a total of 133,282, according to official figures.
According to the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, nearly 2,000 people are hospitalized every day because of Covid-19 in the capital.
“
We have mobilized 20,000 beds, of which 14,000 are currently occupied.
It's a lot,
”he noted on television on Saturday evening.
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No containment envisaged
Russia, one of the countries hardest hit in the world by the pandemic, has been hit hard in recent weeks by the Delta variant, more contagious and which worries all over the world. Moscow has reintroduced in recent weeks restrictive measures such as the return of compulsory teleworking for some of the employees, the compulsory vaccination of employees in the service sector or the creation of a health pass to go to the restaurant. General confinement, as in spring 2020, is however not envisaged for the moment in the city of more than 12 million inhabitants.
Apart from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, the country's second most popular city for tourists and host city of Euro-2020 football matches, is also one of the epicenters of the epidemic.
There is still one game to go in the city, a quarter-final next Friday, potentially with France if they beat Switzerland on Monday.
The city recorded 1,298 new cases and 106 deaths on Sunday, after breaking a death record the day before.
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The vaccination campaign has been lagging behind in Russia since December amid widespread public mistrust and despite repeated calls from President Vladimir Putin. Only 21.2 million people out of 146 million inhabitants received at least one dose, according to Friday figures released by the Gogov site, which aggregates data from regions and media for lack of official national statistics.