NEW DATA TRIPLES RUSSIA’S DEATHS FROM COVID-19
Nation only tallies cases confirmed with an autopsy
MOSCOW
After months of questions over the true scale of the coronavirus pandemic in Russia and the efficacy of a Russian-developed vaccine, the state statistical agency in Moscow has announced new figures indicating that the death toll from COVID-19 is more than three times as high as officially reported.
From the start of the pandemic early this year, the health crisis has been enveloped and, critics say, distorted by political calculations as President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin-controlled media outlets have repeatedly boasted of Russian successes in combating the virus and keeping the fatality rate relatively low.
Russia has reported more than 3 million cases of infection, making it the world’s fourth-hardest-hit country, but only 55,827 deaths, fewer than in seven other countries. A demographer at a government agency who questioned the official fatality figures, dismissing them as far too low, was fired over the summer
New data issued Monday by Rosstat, the state statistics agency, however, indicated that the demographer was right and the real number of fatalities is far higher than previously reported. The agency reported that the number of deaths between January and November was 229,732 higher than over the same period last year, an increase that a senior official blamed largely on the coronavirus.
Tatyana Golikova, a deputy prime minister leading Russia’s efforts to combat the pandemic, told a government briefing Monday that more than 81 percent of the increased number of deaths in 2020 was “due to COVID,” which would mean that the virus had killed more than 186,000 Russians so far this year.
This is still far fewer than the more than 334,000 deaths caused by COVID-19 in the United States but means that Russia has suffered more fatalities as a result of the pandemic than European coun
tries such as Italy, France and Britain, whose poor record has been regularly cited by Russian state media as proof of Russia’s relative triumph. As of Tuesday afternoon, the webpage giving Rosstat’s new data was inaccessible.
The gap between the official death rate and the real one is largely explained by Russia’s practice of recording a death as coronavirus-related only in cases where an autopsy has confirmed the coronavirus as the main cause. Critics say this has allowed authorities to massage the numbers.
Instead of comforting the population, however, juggling with statistics has only fed the deep mistrust that many Russians have toward their government, even among those who vote for Putin, and its reassuring statements.
Russia in August became
the first country to register a coronavirus vaccine, a feat hailed by Putin as evidence of his country’s superior science, and began a nationwide inoculation campaign in early December. But a recent survey found that only 38 percent of Russians intend to get vaccinated despite assurances that it works from Putin, who won nearly 77 percent of the vote in a presidential election last year.
Russia has a long history of world-beating scientific achievement. But the credibility of its vaccine, named after the world’s first satellite, the Soviet-era Sputnik, has been dented by the fact that Putin announced it was ready for use before normal clinical trials had been completed.