Russia, on Tuesday, registered 737 coronavirus deaths over a 24-hour period, a national record of pandemic-related fatalities, yet again. This comes as the country battles a new surge in coronavirus cases.

This is the first time that Russia has crossed the 700-mark for the daily virus cases. Currently, it is the fifth worst-hit country globally. With 139,316 deaths from the virus, Russia has the highest official COVID toll in Europe.

To date, Russia has set six new pandemic highs for COVID-19 deaths in the last eight days as it fights a surging outbreak driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant.

Before a dip in cases on Sunday, the country had registered a surge in cases for five successive days.

Moscow, which was pointed out as the epicenter of Russia’s outbreak, accounts for 90% of the new cases of the Delta variant that was first identified in India, city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

He has ordered offices to send home a third of their unvaccinated employees and restaurants to allow inside only patrons who have been vaccinated or infected in the past sixth months.

His orders further mandate 60% of service industry workers be wholly inoculated by mid-August.

As of Tuesday, just 1.8 million of Moscow’s population of 12 million had been fully vaccinated, according to the Gogov website, which tallies COVID data from the regions.

All of this comes as Russian authorities face a vaccine-skeptic population. An independent poll showed that 54% of the Russian population do not want to get vaccinated, news agency AFP reported. President Vladimir Putin has urged Russians to get vaccinated and “listen to experts” rather than rumours.

Russia had set a goal of fully inoculating 60% of Russia’s population by September. However, last week they said that they will fail to meet the deadline even though jabs were available since early December. The slow rollout of the vaccine has seen only 16% of Russia’s 146 million people get vaccinated.