Russia recorded a new daily record for Covid-19 infections for the second consecutive day on Saturday, with 57,212 new cases, after 49,513 the previous day, according to government figures.
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, warned last week that his country had two weeks to prepare for the Omicron variant and called for testing and vaccination to be accelerated.
The capital, Moscow, the epicenter of the epidemic in the country, also registered a new record for the third day in a row, with 16,904 new cases.
Russian authorities, the most affected country in Europe by Covid-19, are still struggling to convince Russians to get vaccinated.
Although Russia has several vaccines of its own, including the Sputnik V, less than half of the 144 million Russians are fully immunized to date, according to the specialized website Gogov.
The government figures They register 325,433 deaths from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
But the statistical agency Rosstat, which uses a broader definition of virus-related deaths, puts the figure at nearly double.