Coronavirus: Russia now has world’s second highest number of COVID-19 cases

A spike in cases to has seen a European nation suddenly leapfrog Britain and Italy to take second spot in numbers of COVID-19 infections.

Russia has surged past a host of European countries to become the world’s second most afflicted by coronavirus.

The vast country of 145 million people has now officially recorded 227,737 cases of COVID-19, more than the UK, Spain, Italy or France.

But it is still some distance behind the US which has had 1.39 million confirmed cases.

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After initially being slow to react to the threat of coronavirus, as the pandemic gripped China to its south and Europe to its west, Russia saw its highest daily rise in infections yesterday with 11,000 new cases.

China blamed an April outbreak of almost 400 cases in the northern border city of Suifenhe on its citizens crossing the frontier from Russia.

Five senior Kremlin officials have now contracted the virus including President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Mr Putin has largely been confined to his residence since April. The Kremlin has said the leader’s health is rigorously protected and he hasn’t seen Mr Peskov in person for more than a month.

Russian President Vladimir Putin now governs the nation with the world’s second highest number of coronavirus cases. Picture: Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/AFP

A woman wearing a face mask and gloves walks through ticket gates at Savyolovskaya station on the Moscow metro. Picture: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP

A fire in a hospital in St Petersburg, Russia’s second city, has raised questions about the country’s response to COVID-19.

Five patients with coronavirus were killed in the blaze which occurred in an intensive care unit.

According to initial findings, the fire may have been caused by a short circuit in a ventilator or its malfunction, state news agencies said. All the victims were said to be using the machines and likely suffocated from the fumes.

Damaged windows after a fire broke out in the St George Hospital in Saint Petersburg. The blaze killed five coronavirus patients. Picture: Olga Maltseva/AFP

In a surprise announcement on Monday, Mr Putin said it was time after six weeks to gradually lift nationwide restrictions that had forced many people to work from home and businesses to temporarily close.

Although he gave broad leeway to Russia’s regions to ease or tighten restrictions as they saw fit, he said it made sense for certain sectors of the bruised economy, such as construction and heavy industry, to be allowed to restart work from Tuesday.

Russia might now have the second highest rate of cases but its death toll is far further down the list at just over 2000 people.

In contrast, the US has recorded 82,000 deaths, the UK 32,000, Italy around 30,000, and France and Spail around 27,000 each.

Brazil is fast rising the grim ladder of fatalities with 12,000 deaths from 173,000 cases.

Russian government officials have attributed the lower death toll and the rising and large number of cases to a vast testing program under which they say 5.8 million tests have been conducted.