Russia sees dramatic rise in daily COVID-19 cases

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - Spread of the novel coronavirus in Russia has dramatically accelerated over the past five days, with the number of new daily cases reaching its highest level since June.

The daily infection number reached its highest since June, hitting 8,232 on Tuesday, well above the figure recorded on Sept. 1 -- 4,729.

Meanwhile, the total number of patients exceeded 1.16 million with active cases standing at 194,861, the country's emergency task force said in a daily report.

In the past day, 6,479 patients were discharged from hospitals, pushing recoveries to 952,399.

Over the same period, 160 people died of the disease, raising fatalities to 20,545.

Russian President Vladimir Putin asked the Russians to remember that the risks persist as "the pandemic is far from over".

"I want to ask you to remember this and show the utmost responsibility for yourselves and those near you. I ask you to follow all recommendations from the doctors and specialists. We need this for safety, to protect your health," Putin said.

He added that much more is known about this disease today than it was a few months ago, particularly on how to respond and build up preventive measures.

"But now the outcome of our common efforts on fighting the spread of the virus depends on everyone so that we won’t have to resort to large-scale restrictions like we did in the spring, as I said recently; a practice that leaves the economy vulnerable and that is a burden for everyone," he said.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin announced a two-week holiday for the capital's schools "due to the cold season and rise in coronavirus cases".

Earlier, Sobyanin also asked the elderly and people within the risk groups to limit their contacts with outside to minimum and preferably self-isolate at homes and urged the big companies to reassign part of workers to remote work.