By NewsDesk  @infectiousdiseasenews

Russia continues to report a spike in coronavirus disease, or COVID-19 cases with the Ministry of Health reporting some 50,000 cases in the past five days. As of Thursday, health officials put the country tally at 177,160 confirmed cases, including 1625 deaths.

Russia
Image/CIA

The City of Moscow and the Moscow region continues to account for a large percentage of cases nationally with about 110,000.

When asked about the jump in cases in Russia of late, the chief infectious diseases specialist of the Ministry of Health of Russia, Elena Malinnikova said, “Today, there are many times more tests for coronavirus infection than a few weeks ago. An increase in the number of tests performed will inevitably show an increase in the number of infected. If you do not conduct tests, then we will see and have only obvious cases of diseases (moderate and severe). Mild and asymptomatic cases in this way will not fall into the statistics at all. And exacerbate the spread of infection. In Russia, diagnostics have become more actively used throughout the country, and not only in the Moscow region and St. Petersburg.

“Moreover, most of the identified ones are mild and asymptomatic forms. Daily growth in Russia as a whole is 7.9%. If we talk about patients with symptoms of acute respiratory infections and pneumonia, then this indicator is stable and makes up 51% of mild cases, 38% – moderate and 11% severe. Thus, the overall increase did not affect the average number of patients with severe symptoms, although they are more significant for the country’s health.”