Russia's total number of coronavirus infections has topped 8 million, more
than 5% of the population, and the daily infection toll hit a new record.

The national coronavirus task force says there were over 34 thousand new
infections over the past day.

Russian authorities have tried to speed up the pace of vaccinations with
lotteries, bonuses and other incentives, but widespread vaccine skepticism
and conflicting signals from officials stymied the efforts.

The task force says 32% of the country's nearly 146 million people are fully
vaccinated.

Despite the mounting toll, the Kremlin has ruled out a new nationwide
lockdown like the one early on in the pandemic that badly hurt the economy.

The highest concentrations of cases are mostly in comparatively urbanized
western Russia and in the developed areas along the Pacific Coast such as
Vladivostok and Khabarovsk.

However, the sparsely populated Siberian region in the extreme northeast also
show high case rates of more than 150 infections per 100,000 people.