The BMJ is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association. A week ago, it published Covid-19: Russia admits to understating deaths by more than two thirds. An extended excerpt:
“Russia’s true death toll from the novel coronavirus pandemic is not about 57 000, as official figures claim, but more than 180 000, the country’s deputy prime minister, Tatiana Golikova, conceded at a press conference.
Russia’s claims of an extraordinarily low mortality have been widely dismissed as implausible for months by foreign observers and Russian doctors alike. Every other indicator, from packed hospitals with long lines of ambulances to mortality among health workers documented by their own associations, has painted a picture of a country hit hard by the pandemic, not one miraculously spared.
These suspicions were confirmed when the Rosstat statistics agency said on 28 December that the number of deaths from all causes recorded between January and November was 229 700 higher than in 2019. “More than 81% of this increase in mortality over this period is due to Covid,” said Golikova. That would mean that more than 186,000 Russians have died from covid-19. [my bold]
The figures mean Russia ranks third in the world in terms of deaths from covid-19, behind only the US and Brazil. It would also give Russia the fourth highest per capita death rate, about 1273 deaths per million population, behind only San Marino, Belgium, and Slovenia.
But the higher figures, which are estimated from numbers of excess deaths, may never find their way into official statistics of the pandemic. The director of Mexico’s National Centre for Preventive Programs and Disease Control made a similar announcement in October, telling a press conference that the country had undercounted deaths by more than 50 000. [my bold] In that case the new estimate was based on individual review of death certificates—yet the extra deaths have never been added to Mexico’s official count.”
If Russia and Mexico adjusted their official Covid mortality statistics to include the uncounted deaths, both countries would have higher Covid death rates than the USA, as per the following chart*:
So if you wondered why Russia’s Covid death rate has been so low, now you know.
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* Due to space considerations, the chart leaves out San Marino, which has the highest Covid mortality rate in the world. San Marino is a teeny European country with a population of a bit over 33,000.
References:
Covid-19: Russia admits to understating deaths by more than two thirds. BMJ 2020; 371 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4975. Published 31 December 2020.
Worldometer. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Accessed January 6, 2021