Russia said on Monday that its number of deaths from coronavirus was more than three times higher than previously reported, making it the country with the third highest number of deaths.
For months, Russian President Vladimir Putin bragged about the low death rate from the virus in Russia, saying earlier this month that he had done a better job of controlling the pandemic than Western countries.
But since the beginning of the pandemic, some Russian experts said the government was minimizing the outbreak in the country.
On Monday, Russian authorities admitted that this was true. The statistics agency Rosstat said the number of deaths from all causes recorded between January and November increased by 229,700 compared to the previous year.
“More than 81% of that increase in mortality in this period is due to Covid,” said Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, which means that more than 186,000 Russians died from Covid-19.
Russian health officials have registered more than 3 million infections since the pandemic began, placing the country’s number of cases in the fourth highest number in the world.
But they reported only 55,265 deaths – a much lower death rate than in other severely affected countries.
Russia was criticized for listing only Covid’s deaths, where an autopsy confirms that the virus was the main cause.
Covid-19 cases in Russia
Alexei Raksha, a demographer who left Rosstat in July, told AFP last week that the Russian health ministry and the consumer health ministry falsify the coronavirus numbers.
The new Rosstat numbers mean that Russia now has the third highest Covid-19 mortality rate, behind the USA with 333,140 and Brazil with 191,139, according to an AFP count.
Russian authorities are resisting the re-imposition of a national blockade. Kremling hopes to support the struggling economy, even as the country is hit by a second wave of infections.
The Russian government expects the economy to shrink 3.9% this year, while the central bank expects an even deeper decline.
During his year-end news conference earlier this month, Putin rejected the idea of imposing the kind of blockade that many European countries introduced during the Christmas holidays.
“If we follow the rules and demands of health regulators, we don’t need any blockade,” he said.
Although strict measures have been imposed in some large cities, authorities in many regions have limited restrictions on the use of masks in public spaces and reduced mass meetings.
But many Russians break the rules of social distance and, in recent weeks, the country’s outbreak has overburdened poorly funded hospitals in the regions.
Instead, Russia focused its hopes on containing the outbreak by vaccinating people with Sputnik V, in honor of the Soviet-era satellite.
The country launched a mass vaccination program earlier this month, first inoculating high-risk workers aged 18 to 60 without chronic illness.
Over the weekend, those over 60 were given the green light to receive the photo.
On Monday, the developer of Sputnik V, the state research center Gamaleya, said about 700,000 doses had already been released for home use.
However, Russia has not said how many people have vaccinated so far and, according to recent surveys by the state research firm VCIOM and the research agency Levada, only 38% of Russians plan to bring the vaccine.