Russia has reported a new record number of COVID-19 infections confirmed in the past 24 hours as the highly contagious omicron variant spreads across the country, the government coronavirus task force said.
Europe's worst-hit country by the pandemic registered 63,205 cases over 24 hours on January 23, beating previous records of 57,212 on January 22 and 49,513 on January 21, government figures showed.
The task force also reported 679 deaths from COVID-19 on January 23.
The surge comes amid low vaccination rates and poor compliance with coronavirus restrictions.
Although Russia approved a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine -- Sputnik V -- months before most of the world, just about 53 percent of Russia's nearly 146 million people have been fully vaccinated.
