Russia registers 18,555 new cases of Covid-19, 47 deaths in past 24 hours - HQ

MOSCOW. Aug 5 (Interfax) - The daily Covid-19 morbidity has topped 18,500 in Russia for the first time since early April, which is almost 1,500 cases more than reported on Thursday, while 1,906 patients have been hospitalized and 47 have died over the day, the coronavirus response headquarters said in a statement on Friday.

"As of August 5, Russia recorded 18,555 new cases of Covid-19 and 1,906 patients were hospitalized, down 0.5% from the previous day," the headquarters said.

The number of hospitalizations has grown in 40 constituent territories, has decreased in another 40, and has remained unchanged in five, it said.

Forty-seven patients died from Covid-19 over the day, as against 44 the day before.

The daily morbidity has grown by 1,429 cases from 17,126 infections reported on Thursday. This is the first time the morbidity has topped 18,000 cases since April 2, when Russia saw almost 18,000 infections. The morbidity level has been growing for three consecutive days.

"Meanwhile, 9,817 patients have recovered, up 0.7% from August 4," the headquarters said.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Russia has seen a total of 18,672,422 cases of Covid-19, including 382,651 deaths and 18,019,883 recoveries.

Anna Popova, head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor), said earlier that the Covid-19 morbidity was rising in Russia amid the emergence of new, more contagious coronavirus sub-lineages. According to Rospotrebnadzor, the share of more contagious BA.4 and BA.5 sub-lineages of the Omicron variant has been growing in the overall number of Covid-19 cases in Russia. However, any substantial change in the number of severe cases and hospitalizations is unlikely, and there is no need for reinstating coronavirus-related restrictions at the federal level.