MOSCOW, July 23. /TASS/. The coronavirus situation in Moscow has improved over the past two weeks, since hospital admissions fell 25% as well as pneumonia cases, and there was a 20% drop in the number of patients on ventilators in intensive care units. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a televised interview with Rossiya’24 channel on Thursday.

"Moscow has passed its thresholds. We can say that in the past two weeks, the situation in Moscow has not deteriorated, but improved. Coronavirus pneumonia cases fell by approximately a quarter, which is one of the main indicators. Weekly hospital admissions decreased by a quarter as well. There is a 20-percent drop in critical patients on ventilators," Sobyanin said.

On July 16, Moscow started mass testing for SARS-CoV-2, offering free polymerase chain reaction tests (or PCR tests) to adults and children in 207 outpatient clinics. Thus, extra 5,000 tests were made available daily. Even though there is a dramatic increase in testing capacities, the number of new coronavirus cases changes little, remaining at a low level.

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 15,382,800 people have been infected worldwide and more than 630,300 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 9,357,600 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

To date, 795,038 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 580,330 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 12,892 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.