Poland reported 17,260 new daily coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the highest number since November, data by health ministry showed, as the country grapples with its third wave of the pandemic, Reuters reports. The total number of infected patients in Poland has exceeded 1.8 million, including 45,997 deaths. Officials attribute the sharp increase partly to the spread of a much more contagious variant of the coronavirus first identified in Britain. A health ministry spokesman on Wednesday said 30 percent of those tested had the British variant and that the peak of the pandemic was expected towards the end of March or the beginning of April. "Today we won't reach 20,000 cases but that doesn't mean we shouldn't expect that in the coming days," Wojciech Andrusiewicz told web portal wp.pl.

Source: The Standard March 10, 2021 11:10 UTC