Russia said on Monday that the coronavirus death toll was more than three times higher than it previously reported, making it the country with the third-most fatalities.
For months, Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised Russia’s low death rate from the virus, saying earlier this month that it could have managed the pandemic better than Western countries.
But since the start of the pandemic, some Russian experts have said the government is downplaying the country’s outbreak.
On Monday, Russian officials admitted this was true. The statistics agency Rosstat said the number of all-cause deaths recorded between January and November had increased by 229,700 compared to the previous year.
“More than 81% of this increase in the death rate over this period is due to Covid,” said Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, meaning that more than 186,000 Russians have died from Covid-19.
Russian health officials have recorded more than 3 million infections since the start of the pandemic, putting the country’s total caseload in fourth place in the world.
But they have only reported 55,265 deaths – a much lower death rate than in other hard-hit countries.
Russia has been criticized for only listing Covid deaths, with an autopsy confirming the virus was the leading cause.
Covid-19 cases in Russia
Alexei Raksha, a demographer who left Rosstat in July, told AFP last week that Russia’s Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Consumer Health are falsifying coronavirus figures.
Rosstat’s new figures mean that Russia now has the world’s third highest Covid-19 death toll behind the US with 333,140 and Brazil with 191,139, according to an AFP count.
Russian authorities are opposed to reintroducing a nationwide lockdown. The Kremling hopes to support the struggling economy even as the country is ravaged by a second wave of infections.
The Russian government predicts that the economy will contract by 3.9% this year, while the central bank expects an even deeper decline.
At his end-of-year press conference earlier this month, Putin rejected the idea of imposing the kind of lockdown that many European countries introduced over the Christmas holidays.
“If we follow the rules and requirements of health authorities, we don’t need lockdowns,” he said.
While tough measures have been imposed in some major cities, authorities in many regions have limited restrictions on wearing masks in public areas and reducing mass gatherings.
But many Russians are ignoring social distance rules, and in recent weeks the country’s outbreak has overwhelmed poorly funded hospitals in the regions.
Russia has instead placed its hopes on countering the outbreak by vaccinating people with its Sputnik V shot, named after the Soviet-era satellite.
The country launched a large-scale vaccination program earlier this month, vaccinating for the first time high-risk workers aged 18-60 without chronic disease.
At the weekend, the over-60s were given the green light to receive the photo.
On Monday, the developer of Sputnik V, the state-run Gamaleya research center, said about 700,000 doses had been released for household use so far.
However, Russia has not said how many people it has vaccinated so far, and according to recent surveys by the state-run polling station VCIOM and the Levada polling station, only 38% of Russians intend to take the chance.