MOSCOW: The official monitoring and response centre announced on Thursday that Russia has confirmed 197,076 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the greatest daily increase to far, bringing the total number of cases to 13,527,845.

The death toll in the United States rose by 701 to 338,091, while the number of people who were recovered rose by 106,092 to 10,909,397. Meanwhile, Moscow, Russia's most severely affected region, reported 22,747 new cases, bringing the total number of illnesses to 2,558,503.

Children accounted for about 20% of all new Covid-19 cases, according to Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko. He went on to say that almost 12,000 children were being treated in hospitals right now.

The novel coronavirus situation in Russia remained "unstable," according to Anna Popova, head of Russia's consumer rights and human well-being watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, who added that the Omicron variant accounted for more than 60% of new infections.

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