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Most workers across Russia returned to work on Monday after the nine-day hiatus ordered by officials, but Tomsk, Chelyabinsk, Novgorod, Kursk and Bryansk opted to extend their non-working period, the Associated Press reported.
Residents in those five regions will be able to return to work in another week.
COVID-19 cases and deaths across Russia remain high as the country's coronavirus task force reported 39,400 infections and 1,190 deaths on Monday. Russia has the number of COVID deaths in Europe.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was "too early to draw a conclusion" about whether the non-working period was sufficient in significantly containing the virus.
"It will be clear in about a week," he said.
Less than 40 percent of the Russian population of nearly 146 million is fully vaccinated, AP reported.
The task force has reported more than 8.8 million cases and over 248,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Monday's numbers are only slightly lower than the record 41,335 new cases registered on Saturday and the record 1,195 deaths reported on Thursday.
The task force has been reporting around 40,000 new cases and over 1,100 new deaths each day since late October.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered many Russians to stay off work between October 30 and November 7. He authorized regional governments to extend the number of non-working days, if necessary, but only five Russian regions have done so.
Others have restricted attendance to public places, such as restaurants, theaters, and cinemas, to those who either have been fully vaccinated, have recovered from COVID-19 within the last six months, or tested negative in the previous 72 hours.
Russia's autumn surge in infections and deaths also comes amid lax public attitudes toward taking precautions and the government's reluctance to toughen restrictions.
Russia approved a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine months before most countries.
However, reports by Russia's statistical service Rosstat that tally coronavirus-linked deaths retroactively reveal much higher mortality numbers: 462,000 people with COVID-19 died between April of 2020 and September this year.
Russian officials have said the task force only includes deaths for which COVID-19 was the main cause and uses data from medical facilities. Rosstat uses wider criteria for counting virus-related deaths and takes its numbers from civil registry offices where registering a death is finalized.
