Russia's COVID-19 task force Friday reported 887 deaths from COVID-19, a new record for the fourth consecutive day.

Friday's total breaks the record set Thursday by 20 deaths. The task force also reported 24,522 new cases in the past 24 hours, the highest total since late July as the nation endures a huge surge in infections.

The Associated Press reports Russia has imposed only one nationwide lockdown, in spring 2020, during the pandemic. While the country has not announced plans to implement one now, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that the government "will see how it (the situation) will develop. The dynamic is bad. It elicits concern."

Earlier Friday, U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck announced its experimental COVID-19 pill, known as Molnupiravir, reduced by 50% hospitalizations and deaths in people recently infected with the coronavirus.

In a statement on its website, the company said early results of its Phase 3 testing were so strongly positive, an independent data monitoring committee in consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cut short the trials. Recruitment into the study is being stopped early due to those positive results.

The company said it will be seeking approval from health officials in the U.S. and drug regulators around the world. As the first pill that could be used to treat COVID-19, it represents a major breakthrough in efforts to stem the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Friday was the deadline set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for reaching the global target of countries fully vaccinating 10% of their populations against COVID-19. The WHO's African region says 15 countries on the continent have reached that goal.

In a virtual briefing Friday, the WHO's Africa Program area manager for immunization, Richard Mihigo, said those results show progress, yet 70% of African countries missed the milestone. He said half of the 52 countries with COVID-19 vaccination programs in Africa have inoculated less than 2% of their populations.

Mihigo said Africa has received more than 200 million vaccine doses to date and has administered about 71% of them, with 60 million people now fully vaccinated, which represents just over 4% of the total population in Africa.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

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