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Coronavirus pandemic

Coronavirus in Russia: cases top 50,000 but peak approaches

Over the past 24 hours, 5,642 new infection cases were identified

© Sergei Karpukhin/TASS

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia has exceeded 50,000 on Tuesday, the anti-coronavirus crisis center data shows.

Over the past 24 hours, 5,642 more infections were identified. The increase stands at 12% which is higher than that on Monday (slightly less than 10%) but lower than the average increase in the past weeks.

The overall number of cases reached 52,763. Per every 100,000 people, Russia has almost 36 infections, ranking it 24th among 30 states with the biggest number of cases after Romania.

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Russia has conducted 2.14 million tests, putting it in the second place after the US (more than 4 million tests conducted, according to the Johns Hopkins University. Almost 2.5% of the coronavirus tests came back positive, the share has been steadily increasing lately.

Authorities and specialists are more increasingly saying that the outbreak peak is approaching which will mean that the infection rate will start to plateau, meaning that the daily confirmed cases will no longer rise and will start to stabilize. Head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency Veronika Skvortsova believes that the peak can be reached either late this week or early next week. The epidemiological research center of Russia’s consumer watchdog mentions early May but concede that the infection rate can possibly plateau in April.

More cases, fewer symptoms

The crisis center underlined that 45.5% of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours do not show any symptoms (Monday’s figures showed 43.5% of such patients). Skvortsova noted that despite the increase in total number of infections the number of critical cases is not going up.

She also stressed that such a dynamic shows that coronavirus is detected better, while the dropping share of critical cases she lauded as "a good prognosis sign."

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The relatively low death rate indirectly confirms this. As of Tuesday morning, 456 people (0.86% of the infected) died in Russia due to coronavirus-related causes. Over the past 24 hours, 51 more fatalities were reported. Other countries with comparable infection rates have their death rates much higher than in Russia.

The number of recoveries in Russia is confidently growing, 427 more people were declared healthy over the past 24 hours. Moscow in particular registered more than 200 recoveries (219), while the total number hit 2,057. Overall, Russia has 3,873 recoveries (7.34% of the infected).

Regional situation

Moscow confirmed 3,083 infections in a single day. Their overall number increased by 11.7% to reach 29,433. Moscow’s share in the statistics across Russia decreased slightly (from 55.9% to 55.8%).

The Moscow Region, meanwhile, identified 718 more cases in past 24 hours, a record number in a single day.

All regions that top the list of the number of infections experienced relatively slight increases. According to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, Russian regions are generally two or three weeks behind Moscow and the Moscow Region when it comes to coronavirus spread.

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