MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/. The coronavirus growth rate slowed to a record low of 3.2% in Russia and 2.3% in Moscow over the past twenty-four hours, according to the data released by Russia’s anti-coronavirus crisis center on Monday.

Russia registered a total of 8,926 new coronavirus cases over the past twenty-four hours, or much less compared to May 17 when 9,709 people were diagnosed with the infection. The number of new confirmed cases was less than 9,000 for the first time since May 1. The total number of infected people in Russia reached 290,678.

The latest data show that there are 198 infected people per 100,000 Russian citizens as compared to 192 last Sunday.

The coronavirus spread rate that shows how many people an infected person can infect on average before his isolation dropped from 0.91 to 0.9. In Moscow, this rate fell to a record low of 0.73 from 0.77, TASS calculations show.

The number of identified coronavirus cases is dropping amid large-scale testing of the population. Russia’s consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor reported on Monday that the number of coronavirus tests conducted in the country exceeded 7.1 million, or doubling over about three past weeks.

More than 70,000 recoveries

Another 2,836 coronavirus patients have recovered from the illness in Russia over the past twenty-four hours, Russia’s anti-coronavirus crisis center reported.

This figure is considerably below the previous number of recoveries: last time less than 3,000 people were discharged from hospitals per day after their recovery more than a week ago, on May 10.

Nonetheless, the total number of recoveries in Russia reached 70,209 and their share among all infected persons increased again to over 24%. Compared to May 11, it grew almost by 50%, the latest data show.

The relative mortality rate stood at 0.94% on Monday or slightly higher than over the past two weeks. Another 91 people have died of the coronavirus in Russia over the past twenty-four hours (94 on May 17). The total number of fatalities in Russia has reached 2,722.

Situation in regions

Moscow has been identifying less than 4,000 new coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day. A total of 3,238 Moscow residents have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus over the past twenty-four hours. Overall, 146,062 coronavirus cases have been identified in Moscow since the pandemic outbreak or about 50% of all the cases registered in Russia. Moscow’s share in total coronavirus cases has been falling for already a week.

As many as 28,913 people have recovered from the illness in Moscow or almost every fifth infected person, the data show.

Coronavirus cases in the Moscow Region have reached 28,290 (another 921 cases over the past twenty-four hours). The share of the Moscow Region in Russia’s total coronavirus cases is also declining and amounted to 9.7% on May 18. The coronavirus spread rate equaled 0.9 in the Moscow Region, TASS calculations show.

For the first time since the pandemic outbreak, the share of other Russian regions in coronavirus cases across the country has exceeded 40%: a total of 116,326 infected people have been identified there.

Apart from Moscow and the Moscow Region, the largest number of coronavirus cases has been confirmed in St. Petersburg, the Nizhny Novgorod Region and the Republic of Dagestan, and also in the Sverdlovsk, Krasnodar, Murmansk, Tula and Kaluga Regions.

TASS calculations show that the infection spread rate has been below 1 in six of these ten regions. Apart from Moscow and the Moscow Regions, these are the Nizhny Novgorod (0.95), Dagestan (0.83), the Krasnodar Region (0.97) and the Sverdlovsk Region (0.96).

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. According to the latest statistics, over 4,815,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 316,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 1,863,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.