Anna Popova, the head of the Rospotrebnadzor consumer rights protection watchdog, previously said that the first patient, who started to spread the infection in Russia, was recorded on March 1, 2020, and by March 17, there were already 100 cases of the disease. According to the watchdog, the imported cases of COVID-19 detected in Russia before March 2020 did not result in the spread of the infection.

According to Rosstat, as of January 1, the Russian population stood at 146.2 million. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 4.26 million Russian people, or 2.91 percent of the population, contracted the virus. Nearly 86,500 people have died of the disease, or 0.06 percent of the population.

Over the past year, 7.73 percent of residents of Moscow, whose population is 12.7 million, contracted the virus, while 0.12 percent have died. St. Petersburg with a population of 5.4 million is in second place, where 6.8 percent of residents contracted the virus and 0.21 percent have died. In the Moscow region with a population of 7.69 million, which closes the top three in terms of the number of COVID-19 cases, 2.8 percent of residents fell ill, and 0.06 percent have died.

Experts say that despite quite a big number of COVID-19 patients in Russia, the mortality rate from the infection in the country is significantly lower than in many other countries — 578 deaths per 1 million people. In the United States, for instance, this figure stands at 1,548 and in the United Kingdom — 1,832.