MOSCOW: Russia’s daily coronavirus cases exceeded 100,000 on Saturday for the first time since the pandemic began.

The daily count of new infections actually topped 110,000 as the highly contagious omicron variant raced through the vast country.

The state coronavirus task force reported 113,122 new infections over the past 24 hours, which is an all-time high and a sevenfold increase from early in the month, when daily case counts were about 15,000.

The task force said 668 people died of Covid-19 in the past day, bringing Russia’s total fatality count for the pandemic to 330,111, by far the deadliest toll in Europe.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the actual number of infections was probably much higher, because “many people don’t get tested or have no symptoms”.

The spokesman also admitted that a lot of people in the “presidential administration” had been infected with the virus. The vast majority continue to work from home after having isolated themselves, Peskov said.

“This explosive contagiousness of the omicron, it demonstrates itself in full.”

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2022