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Coronavirus deaths in Russia surpass 900 a day for 1st time

Russia already has Europe's highest death toll in the pandemic at over 2,12,000 people, but some official data suggests that is an undercount.

By praveen kumar Published 2 years ago 4 min read
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Russia’s daily coronavirus death toll surpassed 900 on Wednesday for the first time in the pandemic, a record that comes amid the country’s low vaccination rate and the government’s reluctance to impose tough restrictions to control new cases.

Russia’s state coronavirus task force reported 929 new deaths on Wednesday, the fourth time this month that daily COVID-19 deaths have reached record highs. The previous record, of 895 deaths, was registered Tuesday. Russia already has Europe’s highest death toll in the pandemic at over 212,000 people, but some official data suggests that is an undercount.

The task force also reported 25,133 new confirmed cases Wednesday.

The rise in infections and deaths began in late September. The Kremlin has blamed it on too few Russians getting vaccinated. As of Tuesday, almost 33% of Russia’s 146 million people had received at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine, and 29% were fully vaccinated.

Despite the surge, government officials rejected the idea of imposing a lockdown and said regional authorities would take steps to stem the spread of the virus.

A number of Russian regions have limited attendance at large public events and restricted access to theaters, restaurants and other places to people who have been vaccinated, recently recovered from COVID-19 or tested negative in the previous 72 hours.

A theater’s employees wearing face masks to protect against the coronavirus look at customers to ask them to use face masks prior to a spectacle in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021. (AP)

In some regions, Russia’s vast yet severely underfunded health care system has started to show signs of being overwhelmed by the outbreak.

Russian media have reported long lines of ambulances once again forming in front of hospitals in St. Petersburg. One desperate ambulance crew in the city of Vladimir, 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of Moscow, reportedly drove a COVID-19 patient to a local government building after failing to find a hospital bed for her.

On Tuesday, the presidential envoy in the Ural Mountains district — a part of central Russia that encompasses six regions — said 95% of the hospital beds for COVID-19 patients there have been filled.

“The situation is very dire,” Vladimir Yakushev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Asked by reporters if the Kremlin will offer support to regions if they impose local lockdowns to tackle the surge of infections, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged those authorities to think twice. He said regional authorities have the power to decide which measures to introduce but “declaring some kind of lockdown is an absolutely undesirable scenario for any region.”

Overall, Russia’s coronavirus task force has reported over 7.6 million confirmed cases and more than 212,000 deaths. However, reports by Russia’s state statistical service Rosstat that tally coronavirus-linked deaths retroactively reveal much higher mortality numbers.

If Russia stops at 500,000 excess deaths, that will be a good scenario," the now freelance demographer argues. He calculates that the current toll is pushing 450,000 - a giant leap from the 94,267 deaths published online on Friday by Russia's Covid headquarters.

Even that lower number is rarely cited by officials, though.

"In Covid, you choose between the economy and people's lives - mostly older people's lives," is how Alexei sees the government's rationale. We met in a coffee bar - there's been no lockdown here since Spring.

"The Russian state chose the economy. They won't say it, but it's obvious."

Flats in Perm in the Urals

Image caption,The true number of Russian Covid fatalities is likely to come from excess deaths, equivalent in 2020 to almost a third of Perm's population of one million

Resisting lockdown

Most Covid restrictions were lifted nationwide in June, partly to allow a referendum that would enable Vladimir Putin to stay in power. In Perm, the healthcare system began feeling the fallout in autumn.

In early October, Artyom Boriskin posted a video online showing queues of ambulances.

An ambulance nurse, he remembers having to leave sick people at home because hospitals had no space for them. As ambulance crews caught Covid themselves, he says patients waited "from two to 20 hours" for a call-out, even several days.

"I think the measures taken weren't enough to reduce the number of new cases," Artyom argues. He believes the government resisted a second shutdown "because then it would have had to pay people" to stay at home.

"The restrictions should have been tougher. I think we'd have had fewer cases of illness and fewer deaths."

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