Russia registers 21,379 new Covid-19 cases, new all-time high of 828 deaths in past 24 hours - HQ

MOSCOW. Sept 24 (Interfax) - Russia has registered 21,379 new cases of Covid-19 and a new all-time high of 828 deaths in the past 24 hours, the coronavirus response headquarters said in a statement on Friday.

"Over the past day, 21,379 Covid-19 cases were confirmed in 85 regions of Russia, including 1,749 asymptomatic cases identified proactively (8.2%)," the headquarters said.

The daily number of coronavirus infections has been higher than 21,000 in Russia for two consecutive days, although the numbers for Friday are a bit lower than those of Thursday. Russia recorded 21,438 cases of Covid-19 on September 23, or the largest number since August 19.

Moscow reported 2,893 new cases of Covid-19 on Friday, a decline from the 3,445 cases registered on Thursday.

Russia has hit a new all-time high of 828 deaths in the past 24 hours. The mortality rate began growing on Tuesday, when it exceeded 800 and started nearing the previous all-time high of the 820 deaths reported on August 26.

The most deaths were reported from St. Petersburg (59 vs. 53 the day before), Moscow (56 vs. 54 on Thursday), and the Sverdlovsk region (37).

Since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in Russia, it has registered a total of 7,376,374 cases of Covid-19, 202,273 deaths, and 6,574,608 recoveries, including 15,828 recoveries over the past day, among them 1,277 in Moscow.

Russian consumer health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said on Friday that Russia has performed more than 188.7 million Covid-19 diagnostic tests to date, including 539,000 over the past day. As many as 1,254,083 people remain under medical observation.