Why does official St. Petersburg statistics on mortality from coronavirus "lags behind" from the European

In 8 millionth New York, 29 thousand people died from Koronavirus, 8 thousand in 3 millionth Madrid. In 5 millionth St. Petersburg from Covid-19, 167 patients died to May 28. The numbers are certainly pleasing, but the question arises - do we have another virus? Or other statistics? The commission intensified, there were more victims

The fact that in St. Petersburg the official figures in coronavirus are at least behind the real situation is also recognized in Smolny. On May 24, the City Committee on Health said: “The commission on the analysis of deaths ... confirmed another 20 deaths from a new coronavirus infection in St. Petersburg. Patients died in April - early May 2020.

The number of dead has grown sharply due to the fact that the commission increased the intensity of its work. ”

Thus, “fresh” mortality data in the city, which we learn daily, actually lag behind the real almost a month. But what does the phrase “Commission increased the intensity of its work” mean?

“This means that we intensified our work at the expense of personal time,” says Margarita Rybakova, a member of the commission, the main pathologist of St. Petersburg. - We take materials to prepare conclusions home for the weekend, who can work at night. At the same time, the history of the disease of one patient, who, for example, lay in the hospital for 30 days and died, with a pack of paper for the printer. During the day I can see 10 cases and another 10 cases - the second pathologist, the head of the laboratory of pathomorphology of the Research Institute of Children's Infections Vadim Karev. Now I am finishing the materials of the end of April. ”

Margarita Rybakova notes: if 20 new cases of fatal outcomes from coronavirus got into the statistics of mortality, then at least a hundred stories of the disease were viewed.

“I made a preliminary sample-for 321 cases where the patients were confirmed by Covid-19, death came from it in 22% of cases,” the data quotes the pathologist.

It's all about the preposition

This seems to be manifested, it seems, the main difference between Russian statistics and European, American, Asian.

We consider mortality “from coronavirus”, and in other countries “with coronavirus”.

“We work according to WHO recommendations,” explains Margarita Rybakova. - In mid -April, the organization gave unified international recommendations for the diagnosis and analysis of a fatal outcome from coronavirus. According to them, the Covid-19 may be the initial cause of death, or the disease that accompanies the underlying, or one that, although it was confirmed by analysis, did not lead to morphological changes in the body. If a person with coronavirus died of a heart attack, a stroke, from the fact that he was shot down by a car, the cause of death is not a Covid. I do not deny that it could be an impetus for the development of the underlying disease. But at the autopsy, I do not see that it was he who influenced the cells of the body, people with a positive analysis, for example, sometimes there are no changes in the lungs at all. How can a pathologist write that it was coronavirus that caused death? ”

REFERENCE
The updated recommendations for choosing the main state in the statistics of the incidence and mortality associated with the Covid-19, the Russian Ministry of Health published on May 27. They are based on WHO recommendations. And they indicate that “all cases of death associated with the Covid-19 are divided into two groups: cases when the Covid-19 is selected as the initial cause of death; And cases when the Covid-19 is selected as other causes of death, including when the Covid-19 is essential in the development of the underlying disease and its deadly complications. ”

Rybakova notes that in Europe, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, much less openings of the dead from the virus were made, the conclusions were put from the words of the doctors.

“Our mortality figures really look amazingly low compared to data from other countries,” notes Alexei Kupriyanov, candidate of biological sciences, assistant professor in St. Petersburg. - We will learn the final numbers only after the epidemic when the last patient recovers. By comparing the number of infected and cured, we will receive data how much died. ”

According to Kupriyanov, the statistics of mortality and incidence that the official bodies offer us now reduces the visible danger of coronavirus for the population.

“To be honest, it doesn’t care what a person died from-he actually did not take the Covid-19 attack from coronavirus or against the backdrop of his diseases,” he says. - Because, if not for this virus, then a person may have lived for a long time. Due to the non-ordering of quality assistance in chronic diseases, it is also worth waiting for the increase in mortality. The life of people with such diseases will be reduced. This is a deferred effect for several years. ”

Non -sound manipulations

Alexey Kupriyanov believes that there is manipulation with official statistics on coronavirus. However, it is extremely difficult to prove them. Traditional analysis methods used, for example, to identify election fraud, will not help in the case of the Covid-19 epidemic due to too small the volume of numerical information. The scientist admits that not always manipulations with statistics are malicious. In addition to the already mentioned strict follow, the rule of counting the dead “from”, and not “C” virus, other factors also affect. For example, at the beginning of the epidemic, all tests were checked only in the Novosibirsk Scientific Center “Vector”, and data on the first patients caught up with statistics for several more weeks.

In mid -May, the governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, shocked citizens with data on community -acquired pneumonia. It turned out that from the beginning of March almost 700 people died from them, which is 10 times more than from coronavirus, and almost 30–40 times more than a year earlier.

It is also significant that only in May, after the governor announced pneumonia statistics, the number of patients with them approximately equalized with the number of coronavirus diagnoses. If in March-April pneumonia on the day was diagnosed with about two hundred, then Covid was only about 100-180 (on the peak day when the data on sick doctors entered, 424). In May, less than 317 cases of infection were not recorded per day, and the number of people hospitalized with pneumonia by the end of the month almost daily exceeded 200 people (according to the Berezin Medical Institute, where two of the five city sorting centers work, where ambulances have been taken from the beginning of May before sending to the hospitals).

Official data on the incidence of community -acquired pneumonia over the past days of May in the city health committee has not yet been informed. They will become known in the best case in June, and only then it will be possible to understand how many people with pneumonia for a month turned out to be sick coronavirus.

May will show the real picture

In mid -May, the Petersburg Health Committee said: according to the results of the tests on antibodies, we can conclude that

About 6% of the city’s population in one form or another was ill with coronavirus.

In absolute numbers, these are more than 300 thousand people. At the same time, 14,846 cases of disease were clinically confirmed (according to May 28).

In Moscow, antibodies were found in 12.5% ​​proven. In absolute figures, coronavirus in the capital could have aroused more than one and a half million people with officially identified 173.5 thousand.

On May 15, in St. Petersburg, the largest number of confirmed diagnoses was recorded - 541.

Petersburg lags behind Moscow in terms of the development of the epidemic. She came to us a little later, and developed more slowly. Less varieties of the virus were originally imported into our city, mainly European ones (and by that time he had managed to mutate more than once and was different in different parts of the planet), more and more diverse to Moscow.

Perhaps this is one of the explanations why the total mortality for April in St. Petersburg, although it exceeds the average over the past decade (by 156 people), but does not look catastrophic. The situation may be much worse at the end of May.