Russian authorities have reported 652 new coronavirus deaths on Tuesday — the highest daily tally in the pandemic. The new record comes as Russia struggles to cope with a surge in infections and deaths and low vaccine uptake.

Russia’s state coronavirus task force has been registering over 20,000 new coronavirus cases and around 600 deaths every day since last Thursday. On Tuesday, 20,616 new contagions were recorded.

Russian officials have blamed the surge, which started in early June, on Russians’ lax attitude toward taking necessary precautions, growing prevalence of more infectious variants and laggard vaccination rates. Although Russia was among the first countries to announce and deploy a coronavirus vaccine, only about 14% of the population has received at least one shot.

Russia’s coronavirus task force has reported nearly 5.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the pandemic and 134,545 deaths.

Over the past few weeks, Saint Petersburg and the capital Moscow have been hit by a surge of infections, with authorities re-introducing virus restrictions.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin has said that the Delta variant first identified in India accounts for 90 percent of cases in the capital.

To curb the spread of infections, the mayor ordered Moscow’s businesses to send home 30 percent of non-vaccinated employees and restaurants to allow inside only patrons who have been inoculated or infected in the past six months.

Moscow also became the first Russian city to introduce mandatory vaccinations, requiring at least 60 percent of service industry workers to be fully inoculated by mid-August.

Despite free jabs having been available since December, just 22.2 million out of a population of about 146 million had received at least one dose as of Monday, according to the Gogov website, which tallies Covid figures from the regions and the media.

With 134,545 deaths from the virus, Russia has the highest toll from Covid-19 in Europe — even as authorities have been accused of downplaying the severity of the country’s outbreak.