Russia reports 9,699 new COVID-19 cases, 443 deaths

FILE PHOTO: People wait to receive Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac) vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in a carriage of the Academician Fyodor Uglov medical train, at a railway station in the town of Tulun in Irkutsk Region, Russia March 16, 2021. REUTERS/Evgeny Kozyrev

Russia on Friday reported 9,699 new COVID-19 cases, including 1,809 in Moscow, pushing the national case tally to 4,437,938 since the pandemic began.

The government coronavirus taskforce said that 443 people had died in the last 24 hours, taking its death toll to 94,267.

(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; writing by Maria Kiselyova; editing by Tom Balmforth)