Russia faces sharp COVID surge, low vaccine uptake

Russia has seen a sharp surge in coronavirus infections on Monday and is struggling to ramp up its low vaccine uptake. As of last week, only 23 million people have received at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine. Early trials of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine among children ages 12 to 17 have started in Moscow, city officials said. The number of daily new virus cases has more than doubled over the past month, going from roughly 9,000 a day in early June to over 24,000 a day this week. Russian authorities have registered over 5.6 million confirmed cases of the virus in the pandemic and 138,579 deaths.