WARSAW, February 17. /TASS/. The number of coronavirus cases in Poland for the entire period of the pandemic exceeded 1.6 mln, as evidenced by the data released by the country’s Ministry of Health on Wednesday.

At the end of the last day, the department reported 8,694 new cases and 279 deaths. In total, starting from March 4, when the first coronavirus case was detected in the country, 1,605,372 people were infected with it, 41,308 died, 1,354,598 recovered. Over the entire period of the pandemic in Poland, more than 9.2 mln coronavirus tests were done.

Over the past four weeks, the daily increase in the number of cases in the country has rarely exceeded 7,000 new cases. The lowest was the rate of 2,400 cases in 24 hours, and the highest was 7,700. Meanwhile, the level of 1.5 mln coronavirus cases was reached in Poland on January 29. In 18 days, there were 100,000 additional coronavirus cases. However, according to the authorities, the incidence curve went up again.

There are now about 12,200 patients with coronavirus in Polish hospitals, 1,286 of them are connected to mechanical ventilation devices. More than 141,000 people are in quarantine. At the moment, the country has a total of 26,400 beds for COVID-19 patients and 2,600 ventilators.

Poland maintains the pandemic regime announced in March. The vaccination process against coronavirus began in Poland on December 27, 2020. Over 7 weeks, the country received more than 3 mln doses of vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna, as well as AstraZeneca. More than 2.1 mln doses have already been used. More than 1.5 mln people in Poland received the first dose of the drug, 658,000 people have already been vaccinated twice.

In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed 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.