Putin will address the nation again today, as Russia confirms a 28-percent spike in COVID-19 cases in the past day

Vladimir Putin will make another national address on Thursday. The speech will reportedly air on television sometime after 4 p.m., Moscow time. 

Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov, who covers the president, previously reported that Putin plans to announce another “non-work week” between April 6 and 12. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to verify this information, however.

In the past day, on April 2, Russia recorded a 28-percent spike in the spread of COVID-19, confirming 771 new cases of the disease across 29 different regions of the country, raising the nation’s total number of confirmed infections to 3,548. Once again, most of the new cases (595) were reported in Moscow, followed by the Moscow region (43), St. Petersburg (22), Nizhny Novgorod (13), the Leningrad region (11), and Dagestan (10).

Russian health officials also confirmed six more deaths caused by COVID-19, bringing the country’s total fatality count to 30 people. In the past day, another 45 patients fully recovered from the disease, raising the total number of recoveries to 235 people.

Putin addressed the nation last week, on March 25, when he canceled work for non-essential laborers between March 30 and April 5 and urged people to stay home to curb the spread of coronavirus. The Kremlin later indicated that the government still expected people to work from home, if possible.