MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia reported 23,811 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, including 3,425 in Moscow, taking the official national tally since the pandemic began to 6,078,522.
The government coronavirus task force said 795 people had died of coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours, pushing the national death toll to 152,296.
The federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and has said Russia recorded around 290,000 deaths related to COVID-19 from April 2020 to May 2021.
Russia is facing a surge in coronavirus cases that authorities have blamed on the Delta variant and the slow rate of vaccinations.
(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov)