Russian officials acknowledged on Monday that the death toll from COVID-19 in the country is, in fact, more than three times what had been reported previously, after months in office Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich PutinPutin will receive vaccine against Russian coronavirus Cold War double agent George Blake dies at 98. Weapon control held hostage MORE holding the supposedly low mortality rate as a marker of the country’s success in combating the pandemic.
As the guardian reported, the state statistics agency Rosstat said the total number of deaths between January and November from all causes increased to 229,700 compared to the previous year.
“More than 81 percent of this increase in mortality in this period is due to COVID,” said Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, which would indicate a death toll of more than 186,000 Russians, reported The Guardian. The update means that Russia has the third highest number of fatalities in the world, surpassed only by the USA and Brazil.
Russian authorities have so far confirmed more than 3 million cases and only 55,265 deaths, The Guardian noted, far less than in other major affected countries.
The newspaper reported that, despite the increase in the number of coronaviruses, the Russian government is reluctant to order another national blockade. At his year-end conference, Putin said, “If we follow the rules and requirements of health regulators, we don’t need any blockades.”
Moscow hopes to contain the virus through its vaccination program launched this month. Russia was the first country in the world to approve a vaccine against coronavirus. The Russian-made vaccine, dubbed Sputnik V, has shown promising results, but has been criticized by medical journals for having short clinical trials.
In early December, Putin, 68, said he would be slow to get the vaccine due to a lack of research done on people over 60. However, the vaccine was approved for people over 60 over the past weekend, The Guardian reported.