MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/. Russia has registered a spike in coronavirus cases - from 253 to 306 - over the past 24 hours, the Russian task force for prevention and spread of the novel coronavirus told reporters on Saturday.
"In the past 24 hours, Russia has registered 53 coronavirus cases in 18 regions. As of today, the Russian Federation has registered 306 coronavirus cases in total," the task force said adding that four patients had been discharged from hospitals over the past day.
According to the task force, 17 new cases were confirmed in the Moscow Region, six in Moscow, five in Tatarstan, four in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, three in the Sverdlovsk Region, two in each of the Tula, Kaliningrad, Krasnodar Regions, Kabardino-Balkaria and the city of St. Petersburg. One new patient was registered in each of the Ryazan, Kurgan, Chelyabinsk, Stavropol, Krasnoyarsk, and Khabarovsk Regions, Yugra and the Republic of Crimea.
Over the past 24 hours, four coronavirus patients were discharged from hospitals. Among them three are in Moscow and one is in the Moscow Region. The task force says that a total of 16 people have recovered from the disease. Among them are 13 Russians, two Chinese and one Italian. Moreover, three Russian nationals, who contracted the disease on Diamond Princess cruise ship, were discharged from hospital as well.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said earlier there are no grounds for panic of the coronavirus infection in the country thanks to the fact that Russia took prohibitive measures earlier than other countries, that is, in January, the infection was spreading to a limited extent. According to preliminary data for 2020, there has been no increase in the number of pneumonia cases and pneumonia-related deaths. In a number of regions, there is a decrease in these numbers compared to the same period last year.
In late December 2019, a pneumonia outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus was reported in central China’s city of Wuhan, an economic and industrial megacity with a population of 12 million. After the coronavirus denoted as COVID-19 broke out of China’s Hubei province, it spread across China and then throughout the world, affecting more than 150 countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) characterized the outbreak as a pandemic. According to the latest reports, over 240,000 cases of patients infected with the new coronavirus have been confirmed up to now. The virus’ death toll has surged to over 10,000.