Russia registers 18,024 new cases of Covid-19, 797 deaths in past 24 hours - HQ

MOSCOW. Sept 8 (Interfax) - Russia has registered 18,024 new cases of Covid-19 and 797 deaths in the past 24 hours, the coronavirus response headquarters said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Over the past day, 18,024 Covid-19 cases were confirmed in 85 regions of Russia, including 1,367 asymptomatic cases identified proactively (7.6%)," the headquarters said.

For the second time this month, St. Petersburg reported the largest number of daily infections, 1,430. There were 626 infections in that city on Tuesday. St. Petersburg also ranked first by the number of daily infections, 1,312, on September 1. Following St. Petersburg is Moscow (1,269).

Meanwhile, Moscow has reported the most deaths from Covid-19. Forty-eight patients died from Covid-19 in Moscow in the past 24 hours, as against 37 in St. Petersburg and 35 in the Sverdlovsk region. In all, 797 people died from Covid-19 across Russia over the past day.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in Russia, it has registered a total of 7,065,904 cases of Covid-19, including 189,582 deaths and 6,320,512 recoveries.

The Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) said on Wednesday that Russia has performed more than 181.8 million Covid-19 diagnostic tests to date, including 349,000 over the past day. As many as 1,136,975 people remain under medical observation.