German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Thursday that the highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant was projected to become the dominant strain across the country as early as this month.
"Delta will soon become the dominant strain in Germany. It is my expectation that we will see the share of Delta cases among new ones exceed 70-80% as early as July," he told a press conference on COVID-19 response.
Spahn warned that the mutation was spreading fast across Europe, driving infection numbers upwards in countries with a large share of vaccinated population, such as the United Kingdom.
Spahn said keeping up a steadily high vaccination pace was crucial to defeating the virus. More than 55% of Germans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, with 37.3% being fully immunized. Almost a million doses were administered on Wednesday alone.
Russia recorded 23,543 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, up from 21,042 the day before, bringing the total to 5,538,142, the federal response centre said on Thursday.
"Over the past day, 23,543 COVID-19 cases were confirmed across 85 Russian regions, including 3,322 cases (14.1%) without clinical symptoms," the statement said, adding that the rate of increase grew to 0.43%.
Moscow confirmed 7,597 daily infections, up from 5,823 the day before. The Russian capital was followed by the Moscow region with 2,663 cases, up from 2,583 the day before, and St. Petersburg with 1,612 cases, up from 1,503 the day before.
The response centre reported a new record of 672 fatalities linked to the coronavirus, up from 669 the day before, raising the country's death toll to 135,886.
In the same 24 hours, 16,928 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals across the country, up from 16,356 the day before, bringing the total to 5,017,321.
Bahrain is looking forward to establishing a hub to manufacture Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 and distribute it in the Middle East and North Africa, a spokesperson for the Bahraini government said ahead of the foreign minister's visit to Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Bahraini counterpart, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, will meet on Friday to discuss the situation in Syria and the Arab Gulf and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
"Bahrain and Russia cooperate across many fields including health, and in face of the global pandemic the two counties have been closely cooperating on their vaccination rollouts from an early stage. As part of an agreement reached in June, Bahrain looks forward to establishing a hub for the manufacture and distribution of Sputnik V in the Arab Gulf, Middle East and North Africa regions," the government spokesperson said.
"With cooperation from all of us and the grace of God, I'm certain that we can suppress COVID-19 transmission and restore people's lives quickly," President Joko Widodo said.
India has confirmed 48,786 new cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, with the total number of those infected having reached 30,411,634, the country's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Thursday.
The death toll from the disease has reached 399,459 people, with 1,005 new fatalities being recorded over the past day.
More than 29.48 million people have recovered in India since the start of the outbreak.
A day earlier, the country confirmed 45,951 new coronavirus cases, with 817 fatalities.