Russia on November 4 registered a new record number of daily COVID-19 deaths for the third day in a row.
Russia's coronavirus task force reported a record high of virus deaths -- 1,195 -- despite the imposition of a nationwide workplace shutdown and the introduction of restrictions in several regions.
It also reported 40,217 new infections in the past 24 hours, including 6,305 in Moscow.
Several Russian regions have opted to extend a one-week workplace shutdown that took effect nationwide on October 30 in response to a surge in infections.
Authorities in the Kursk and Bryansk regions, which border Ukraine; the Chelyabinsk region near the Ural Mountains; Tomsk in Siberia; and the western region of Smolensk said on November 3 that their shutdowns would continue after November 8.
The Novgorod region already announced on November 1 that it was extending its shutdown by a week.
President Vladimir Putin gave regional authorities the option of extending the workplace shutdown.
Moscow authorities, meanwhile, said businesses there would reopen on November 8. Other measures, including a requirement that companies have at least 30 percent of their staff work from home, would remain in place, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
"The spread of the disease has stabilized in terms of its detection and its severe forms requiring hospitalization," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Mayor Sergei Sobyanin as saying.
