MOSCOW, April 18. /TASS/. The share of Moscow residents infected with coronavirus, in which the disease is asymptomatic, increased to 60% compared with 40% a week ago, Head of the Moscow Department of Healthcare Alexey Khripun said in an interview with Channel One.

Khripun noted that about 18,000 tests for coronavirus are performed daily in Moscow. "This number (of detected cases of infection - TASS) is increasing, but I must say that it is mainly due to asymptomatic carriers of the virus. A week ago, about 40% of all cases in Moscow had no symptoms, today there are about 60% of asymptomatic carriers of the virus," he said.

On Friday, Russia’s chief sanitary doctor Anna Popova said that in general in Russia the share of asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus is 45-50% of all infected people. She explained that growth of this indicator compared with previous weeks is associated with increasing detection of infected.

According to the latest data, 20,754 infected were detected in Moscow on April 18.

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.