Russia and Ukraine have both reported record numbers of COVID-19 infections as the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus continues to spread across Europe.
In Russia, new daily cases jumped to 168,201 from 155,768 a day earlier, the anti-coronavirus task force said on February 4, while the government coronavirus task force also reported 682 deaths in the last 24 hours.
Despite having several domestically developed jabs available, Russia has been struggling with low inoculation rates amid widespread vaccination skepticism among its population.
Meanwhile, Ukraine recorded a record daily high for the second day in a row on February 4, with the Health Ministry reporting 43,778 new infections over the past 24 hours. The previous high of 39,620 cases was reported on February 3.
The number of deaths was 174, according to the ministry.
Ukraine's total infections in the pandemic stands at 4.2 million so far, with 100,983 fatalities.