Russia currently has the world's second-highest number of coronavirus cases — but ranks 18th in officially reported fatalities from the virus. Statisticians are eyeing those figures with suspicion.
The distinction allows doctors to assign COVID-19 patients as dying from other factors — such as heart, respiratory or kidney failure — unless the virus played a direct role in a patient's death., saying 60% of patients with the virus died from other factors.
But critics point to statistical glitches in regions away from Moscow, where President Vladimir Putin put governors in charge of the coronavirus response."It's a hierarchy. Statistics in Russia have traditionally been managed according to political ambitions at the very top of government," says Anastasia Vasilyeva of the medical group Doctors' Alliance.
"It's almost as if governors have declared no one's allowed to die from COVID-19," says the demographer Raksha. "I don't know why they're doing it, but I'm a statistician and I see it."At a news conference this week, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova insisted fewer Russians were dying from COVID-19 than in other countries because of smart government policies, not fake numbers.
"It's a political hit," said Andrei Klimov from the Foreign Affairs Council in Russia's Upper House in an interview with the state Rossiya-24 channel. "The traditional organs of anti-Russian propaganda, particularly in the U.S., have started pushing this idea that we — allegedly — lowered the numbers of infected and the number of dead."
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