Russia’s capital has not reached the plateau yet and is looking at several weeks of “challenges” ahead, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said in an interview aired on state channel Russia 24.

“Unfortunately, I can’t say we’ve reached a plateau or that we have some positive dynamic,” Sobyanin said. “Moreover, I see that we are not halfway through yet.”
“Out situation is not overly dramatic in terms of growth, but at the same time we see 8-10-12%, sometimes up to 15% growth in cases, and those are [just] the people who had the coronavirus diagnosis confirmed in a lab,” Sobyanin added.

Moscow hospitals are “coping” with the challenges so far but the health authorities are working to double the amount of beds for coronavirus patients in the next week and half, the mayor said.

Meanwhile, the city authorities do not plan to tighten restrictions further as of now, according to the interview. Last week, Moscow introduced a QR-code pass system for all movements by means of transport, which created bottlenecks in the subway on the first day of its introduction.

Cases rise: On Sunday, Russia reported 6,361 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 80,949, its coronavirus response headquarters said in a statement.

More than a half of the new cases were reported in Russia’s regions but Moscow remains the most badly affected city with more than 40,000 cases.

According to the response headquarters, about 45% of new cases were asymptomatic.