Russia registers 19,905 new cases of Covid-19, 791 deaths in past 24 hour - HQ

MOSCOW. Sept 17 (Interfax) - Russia has registered 19,905 new cases of Covid-19 and 791 deaths in the past 24 hours, the coronavirus response headquarters said in a statement on Friday.

"Over the past day, 19,905 Covid-19 cases were confirmed in 85 regions of Russia, including 1,693 asymptomatic cases identified proactively (8.5%)," the headquarters said.

The daily coronavirus morbidity increased again in Russia on Friday - the number of new infections exceeded 19,000 for the first time in September the day before. Russia reported 19,594 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, or the largest number since August 25.

The majority of new infections, 2,537, were reported by Moscow, as against 2,479 cases, the largest number since August 13, recorded on Thursday. There were 1,738 new cases in St. Petersburg and 837 in the Moscow region. Both of them have also seen an increase in Covid-19 numbers - there were 1,653 new infections in St. Petersburg and 768 in the Moscow region on Thursday.

In the past 24 hours, 791 patients died from Covid-19 across Russia, most of them in Moscow (42), St. Petersburg (39), and the Sverdlovsk region (37).

Since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in Russia, it has registered a total of 7,234,425 cases of Covid-19, including 196,626 deaths and 6,469,017 recoveries, including 16,619 recoveries over the past day, among them 1,359 in Moscow.

The Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) said on Friday that Russia has performed more than 185.6 million Covid-19 diagnostic tests to date, including 185,000 over the past day. As many as 1,127,468 people remain under medical observation.