Flu claimed 9 lifes

Nine fatal flu cases had been registered in Russia by the end of this week, seven of whom were children. Influenza has claimed lives in Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk, Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Astrakhan and Tomsk, top state epidemiologist Gennady Onishchenko told Interfax on Friday. Onishchenko said the epidemic grew slowly from late December to early January, but sharply intensified in February, gripping 13 new regions in the first week of this month, Interfax reports. The official epidemic threshold has been passed in 36 major Russian cities, including Astrakhan, Archangelsk, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Volgograd and Barnaul.