The Moscow headquarters said that the daily increase in the incidence is mainly due to the introduction of changes in the procedure for registering new cases of COVID-19 at the federal level.

In particular, in accordance with the decision of the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of Russia, now, in addition to the daily registration of cases of coronavirus infection based on the results of PCR tests, data are recorded on the results of tests conducted in clinics for the presence of an antigen to the pathogen (rapid tests).

The operational headquarters emphasized that if the previous accounting methodology were maintained, a significant drop in the incidence would be observed today.

In addition, it is noted that the middle of the week is traditionally accompanied by an increase in the incidence rate, since on Monday and Tuesday residents often turn to medical organizations after the weekend.

“Test results after processing samples taken on Monday and Tuesday are received by the middle of the week, by which time the number of new cases reaches its peak.

A similar situation was observed, for example, last week," the headquarters said in a statement.

Along with this, the operational headquarters said that doctors from Moscow polyclinics conducted more than 4,000 telemedicine consultations for patients with SARS and COVID-19 per day.

In total, more than 45,000 requests have already been made to the doctors of Moscow polyclinics for telemedicine consultations on ARVI and COVID-19.

coronavirus statistics

Over the past day in Russia, 19,446 people with coronavirus were hospitalized, which is 3.63% less than on February 9 (20,178).

The number of newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 reached 197,076.

106,092 people have fully recovered, 701 patients have died.

For the entire period of observation in Russia, 13,527,845 cases of coronavirus have been detected.

10,909,397 people have recovered, the number of deaths has reached 338,091.

In Moscow, 1374 people were hospitalized per day.

22,747 new cases of coronavirus infection have been identified.

There are 629 people on ventilators in the capital's hospitals.

More than 5 thousand new cases per day were also detected in St. Petersburg (21,644), Moscow region (7611), Krasnoyarsk region (6631), Sverdlovsk region (5510), Perm region (5302) and Nizhny Novgorod region (5120).

Immunity and strains

Doctor of Medical Sciences infectious disease specialist Nikolai Malyshev spoke about the formation of a plateau in the incidence of coronavirus.

In an interview with Sputnik radio, he noted that the number of patients discharged after COVID-19 began to grow slightly, but directly to the plateau "is still far away."

“A plateau is when how much you get sick, so much is discharged.

When these figures are equal, it will be good.

Then the number of those discharged will begin to exceed the number of cases, ”the specialist explained.

Also on russian.rt.com Doctor Pesterev spoke about the likelihood of a recurrence of COVID-19

Immunologist Vladislav Zhemchugov expressed the opinion that the immunity obtained as a result of the transferred variant of the coronavirus "delta" does not protect against infection with "omicron".

“It already differs very much in the very region of the viral particle, where the action of vaccine immunity, protective antibodies is concentrated.

This S-protein has changed so much that after “delta” you can get sick with “omicron”, and after “omicron” you can get sick with “delta”, TASS quotes Zhemchugova.

On February 8, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Kirill Dmitriev, suggested that this week Russia will pass the peak incidence of the omicron strain of coronavirus.

According to him, RDIF expects a significant decrease in the number of new cases by the end of February.

The head of the RDIF added that the use of the Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines allowed Russia to cope with the omicron strain much better than most countries.