The Moscow mayor on Friday sounded the alarm over a spike in coronavirus cases saying Covid-19 was becoming more difficult to treat as city authorities posted the highest number of daily infections since January, according to AFP.

“We expected that the spring pandemic peak would fall on April-May just like last year,” Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in televised remarks.

“But now we're seeing that it has shifted towards June-July.” Sobyanin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, estimated that around half of Moscow residents had by now some level of immunity against the virus.

“At the same time we are seeing just how aggressive Covid is,” he said, stressing that it was becoming more difficult to treat it.

“Quite a lot of Muscovites are in intensive care on ventilators,” he said.