Russia’s Health Ministry reports 101 coronavirus deaths among medical workers

According to official data, 101 medical workers in Russia have died from the coronavirus, reports Lyudmila Letnikova, the director of the Health Ministry’s department of public health, communications, and medical expertise.

Letnikova told Interfax that the Health Ministry has started keeping a registry of deceased medical workers. “This week every region should complete the register, we asked them to confirm. Last Friday 101 people were on this list of confirmed [deaths]. We will check this data against the data from the [Social Insurance Fund], which is based on media reports and the ‘Memory List’,” Letnikova said.

She added that according to data from the Social Insurance Fund, 823 healthcare workers had received insurance payments in connection with coronavirus infections, as of May 25. More than 5,000 appeals are currently being verified.

• At the end of April, a website called the “Memory List” appeared online, which includes the names of all of the healthcare workers in Russia who have died during the coronavirus pandemic. The list itself is compiled by other medical workers, recording their deaths of their colleagues However, there has been no official verification that these deaths are all linked to COVID-19. The list currently includes 302 names.
• On May 19, Mediazona published a report verifying the data available via the “Memory List,” revealing that at least 186 medical workers had died from the coronavirus in Russia so far (the list had 222 names at the time of the report’s publication).
• On May 21, the Associated Press reported the deaths of more than 70 Russian healthcare workers from COVID-19, on the basis of official data and media reports.
• The Russian authorities had previously refrained from releasing countrywide statistics on the total number of healthcare workers who have contracted the coronavirus, or suffered related deaths. Figures were only available for certain regions.
• Contrary to media reports, the head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, has claimed that the mortality rate among Russian physicians has hardly increased during the coronavirus pandemic.