MOSCOW: The official monitoring and response centre in Russia reported 39,160 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases to 8,873,655. The mortality toll in the United States jumped by 1,211 to 249,215 in a single day, while the number of recoveries increased by 32,036 to 7,619,596.

Meanwhile, according to sources, Moscow, Russia's worst-affected region, has recorded 5,287 additional cases, bringing the overall number of illnesses to 1,871,893. As of Friday, nearly 60 million people in Russia had received at least one dosage of a vaccine, with about 57 million of them fully immunised, according to official figures.

While the statewide non-working period, which began on October 30, technically concluded on Monday, it has been prolonged in five of Russia's regions, with the exception of Moscow, to prevent the virus from spreading further. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said it was too early to say whether the non-working days had a good impact, but the situation in Moscow had stabilised.

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