Russia’s up-to-date statistics on coronavirus-related deaths have shown that more than 100,000 people with COVID-19 died in the pandemic in December. This is much higher than previously reported by government officials.
According to data released by the Russian state statistics agency Rosstat on Monday, a total of 116,030 people with COVID-19 died in Russia between April and November. The count included cases where the virus was not the leading cause of death and where the virus was suspected but not confirmed.
The data also showed that the number of all-cause deaths in the first 11 months of this year grew by 229,700, or almost 14%, compared to the same period in 2019.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said at a government meeting on Monday that the increase reported by Rosstat is mostly related to the coronavirus.
“I would like to note that more than 81% of the increase in mortality rate during this period (between January and November) is related to COVID and the consequences of being infected with COVID,” Golikova said.
Golikova’s remark suggests that about 186,000 deaths could be linked to the coronavirus.
Both the count of Rosstat and Golikova’s onslaught are much higher than the 55,827 deaths in the pandemic reported by the Russian government’s coronavirus task force, which include deaths that occurred in December.
The relatively low number of deaths of the Russian task force, which is reflected in the numbers released by the World Health Organization, raised questions among experts at home and abroad when Russia’s count of confirmed coronavirus cases became one of the largest in the world.
Critics and Western media have claimed that Russian authorities could falsify the numbers for political purposes to reduce the scale of the outbreak – allegations that the authorities broke down.
Russian officials attributed the differences between the numbers reported by the task force and Rosstat to different counting methods. The task force told the Interfax news agency in August that they only include deaths where COVID-19 was the main cause.
Officials also said the task force used data collected from medical facilities, while Rosstat obtained its numbers at the civil registry offices where the process of registering a death was completed.