MOSCOW • Russia yesterday reported its highest daily coronavirus death toll of 135, bringing the country's total fatalities to nearly 3,000.
Overall infections also passed 300,000, but the number of active virus cases in the country dropped for the first time.
Russia has recorded far fewer deaths than other countries with large outbreaks, but critics have cast doubt on the low official mortality rate and accused the authorities of under-reporting in order to play down the scale of the health crisis.
Russian health officials say one of the reasons the fatality count is lower than in the United States and parts of western Europe is that only deaths directly caused by the virus are being included.
The authorities also say that since the virus came later to Russia, there was more time to prepare hospital beds and launch wide-scale testing to slow the spread.
The official death toll now stands at 2,972, with 308,705 cases recorded.
For the first time yesterday, Russia recorded more people recovering in the past 24 hours - 9,262 - than the number of people testing positive, with active cases dropping by 633.
The number of new cases at 8,764 was the lowest daily increase since May 1.
One of Russia's most high-profile virus cases, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, returned to work on Tuesday after receiving treatment for the disease in hospital.
Russia has the second highest number of infections behind only the US, but the number of new cases has fallen below 10,000 for five days in a row.
The North Caucasus region of Dagestan has emerged as a virus hot spot, with the fifth-highest number of infections. The Muslim-majority region confirmed a total of 36 deaths.
Dagestan, with a population of 2.9 million, has more than 3,600 confirmed cases and local officials have described the situation as a "catastrophe" with hospitals overwhelmed.
President Vladimir Putin highlighted the region's grave situation this week, pledging to send aid and implement "urgent measures".
Meanwhile, Mr Mishustin said on Monday that Russia had halted the growth in infections and there were other positive signs.
But the mayor of Moscow, Russia's worst-hit region now in its eighth week of lockdown, said it was still too soon to let people out for walks or exercise and new infections would have to fall sharply before that happened.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the shutdown had spared Moscow the worst-case scenario mapped out by the authorities, but 18,000 patients were still in a bad way in hospitals and thousands of new cases were reported daily.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS
