MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/. The current surge in COVID-19 cases in Russia is a classical second, rather than third, wave of the epidemic, Alexander Gorelov, deputy director of the Russian sanitary watchdog’s Central Research Institute of Epidemiology and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said on Monday.

"As a matter of fact, we in Russia are going through a classical second wave and are observing an upwards phase at the moment," he told an online conference at TASS.

He noted that his opinion about COVID waves differed from the one floated in the press.

The first wave of the coronavirus infection hit Russia in the spring of 2020. What the media calls the second wave occurred in the autumn and winter and the coming of the third wave was reported in the spring of 2021.

"I stand by my opinion, which is backed, primarily, by the epidemiological basis. A wave is a situation when we begin from zero to a surge and back to zero. We can speak about a second wave when the virus mutates and its mutated variant spreads faster and actually supersedes the previous gene variant," Gorelov explained.

To date, 5,635,294 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 5,083,441 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 138,579 fatalities nationwide. The Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.