Moscow (CNN) –– A statement by a senior Russian official indicates that the actual number of deaths from covid-19 in the country is more than three times higher than what the official statistics show.
New data from the country’s statistics agency, Rosstat, reveals that during the first 11 months of 2020, there was an increase of more than 229,700 deaths in Russia compared to the same period in 2019.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova is the person in charge of the coronavirus response in the country. And this Monday he said that “more than 81% of this increase in mortality during that period is due to covid-19” in Russia. According to CNN calculations, that means that 186,000 people died in the country from coronavirus in these months.
With a real number of deaths from covid-19 of 186,000, Russia would be the third country with the highest number of deaths in the world, after the United States and Brazil.
Golikova’s statement is the first time that a Russian official has acknowledged what critics have long suspected. Precisely, that the true number of deaths from coronavirus in Russia is much higher than the official figure. The latter is below 56,000.
Russia has reported more than 3 million confirmed cases of covid-19. However, it has maintained that it has a comparatively low mortality rate thanks to its handling of the pandemic.
Critics have expressed overwhelming skepticism about Russia’s official figures. In that sense, they point out that the problem lies in the counting method that makes it possible to attribute deaths in patients infected by coronavirus to other causes. And that, they say, allows officials to have a lower death toll.
For example, Rosstat noted that 35,645 people with coronavirus or who were suspected of having coronavirus died in November. But, he added, in about a third of deaths, Covid-19 was not considered the leading cause of death. Also not a major factor in death at all.
Russia’s coronavirus task force, which publishes daily statistics on cases and deaths using a different methodology than Rosstat’s, reported only 12,229 coronavirus-related deaths in November.
This counting method differs from the World Health Organization guidelines. This entity establishes that all deaths related to covid-19 must be counted unless there is “a clear alternative cause that cannot be related” to the disease.
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