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Coronavirus pandemic

Daily tally of new Covid cases in Russia may reach 65,000 by early February - expert

The Zakharov-led team developed a CIR (Confirmed cases, Infected, Removed) mathematical model to forecast Covid spread for a term of one month

MOSCOW, January 16. /TASS/. The daily tally of new coronavirus cases in Russia may reach 65,000 by early February, Viktor Zakharov, holder of chair in mathematical modelling of energy systems and head of the Intellectual Logistics Center at the St. Petersburg State University, told TASS on Sunday.

The Zakharov-led team developed a CIR (Confirmed cases, Infected, Removed) mathematical model to forecast Covid spread for a term of one month. The model’s effectiveness was highlighted in the Informatics and Automation journal in October.

"Our model indicates that the daily tally of new coronavirus cases in Russia may reach 65,000 by February 1 and the overall number of confirmed cases will exceed 11.5 million," he said.

According to Zakharov, the number of active coronavirus cases will reach one million by February 1. Today, this figure stands at 623,599, he noted.

"Incidence may continue to grow until mid-February. In this case, the number of new cases identified a day may exceed 110,000 in the second week of February and the number of active cases will grow to 1.8 million. After that, morbidity rates will begin to subside," he said.

According to the latest statistics, around 326.2 million people have been infected worldwide and more than 5.5 million deaths have been reported.

To date, 10,803,543 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 9,858,615 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 321,320 fatalities nationwide. The Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.

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