(Adds further details, background)
WARSAW, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Poland will report a record number of new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, with the daily count rising above 50,000 and expected to climb in coming days, Deputy Health Minister Waldemar Kraska said.
Kraska told website interia.pl that the highly transmissible Omicron variant currently accounted for around 40% of cases.
"The fifth wave is gaining momentum. Today we will have over 50,000 new SARS-CoV-2 infections," Kraska said.
"This is a record number, and in the coming days there will be further increases in infections, which we can see from the number of referrals for PCR tests (...) and in the number of tests performed."
Poland performed a record number of 170,000 official tests in the last 24 hours.
On Tuesday, Poland reported 36,995 cases and 252 COVID-related deaths and announced older primary school students and high school students in Poland would move to remote learning from Thursday. (Reporting by Pawel Florkiewicz and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
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