Twenty percent of Russia's COVID-19 patients have not travelled abroad and have contracted the disease inside the country already, the head of the country's consumer rights protection watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said on Friday.
"I want to draw your attention to the fact that 20 percent of the total number of infected people are identified as contactual, they have not travelled [abroad]," Anna Popova said at a meeting of the coronavirus response coordinating council.
The official said she did not witness the explosive growth of Russia's COVID-19 incidence rate.
"The epidemiological situation in the Russian Federation is developing quite slowly so far, there is no explosive growth," Popova said.
She warned, in the meantime, that the third wave of returnees from abroad would be a significant challenge that Russia was yet to go through.
Speaking further, the official said that seventy-two percent of Russia's COVID-19-positive people have acute respiratory infection symptoms, and 18 percent are asymptomatic.
"Of all those infected, 72 percent show a clinical pattern of acute respiratory infections, and 18 percent are people with no symptoms. These cases have been detected through active operations of the Rospotrebnadzor and medical services in Russia's subjects," Anna Popova said at a meeting of the coronavirus response coordinating council.
Earlier in the day, the country's coronavirus response centre said that it had registered 96 new COVID-19 cases in 16 regions over the past 24 hours, with the total count now reaching 1,036, and one fatality of a COVID-19-positive patient.