Russia registers 19,706 new cases of Covid-19, 817 deaths in past 24 hours - HQ

MOSCOW. Sept 22 (Interfax) - Russia has registered 19,706 new cases of Covid-19 and 817 related deaths in the past 24 hours, the coronavirus response headquarters said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Over the past day, 19,706 Covid-19 cases were confirmed in 85 regions of Russia, including 1,662 asymptomatic cases identified proactively (8.4%)," the headquarters said.

Following two days of decline in coronavirus morbidity levels, the number of cases started growing again on Wednesday. There were 19,179 new coronavirus infections in Russia on Tuesday. Morbidity has been growing in Moscow, which reported 1,991 new cases on Wednesday (as against 1,926 on Tuesday) and St. Petersburg, 1,521 cases vs 1,060 the day before.

Also, the number of deaths from Covid-19 has been growing in Russia for two consecutive days: there were 817 deaths in the past 24 hours and 812 the day before. The numbers correlate to the levels of August, when Russia saw a spike in coronavirus mortality and hit the all-time high of 820 deaths on August 26.

Most deaths were reported from Moscow (50). St. Petersburg (43), and the Sverdlovsk region (38).

Since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in Russia, it has registered a total of 7,333,557 cases of Covid-19, including 200,625 deaths and 6,542,213 recoveries, including 16,102 recoveries over the past day, among them 1,363 in Moscow.

The Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) said on Wednesday that Russia has performed more than 187.7 million Covid-19 diagnostic tests to date, including 398,000 over the past day. As many as 1,163,321 people remain under medical observation.