WHO called the Russian method of calculating mortality from COVID-19 unusual and recommended revising it

The World Health Organization (WHO) considers the rather low mortality rate from COVID-19 in Russia relative to the number of people infected to be unusual. Michael Ryan, head of the WHO emergencies program, said this at a briefing.

According to him, in the Russian Federation the number of tests for coronavirus and the number of cases are increasing, and mortality is decreasing. He cited the example of other countries where testing is carried out on the same scale, but mortality rates are higher.

"It is important that Russian authorities review the way they confirm deaths to ensure they are doing it correctly," Ryan said.

He added that the methods for calculating deaths from COVID-19 differ in different countries, despite the uniform WHO recommendations. Some include all deaths of people with coronavirus in statistics, even if this infection was not the main cause of death. This leads to inflated mortality rates.

Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov, who himself suffered from COVID-19, said that the low mortality rates from coronavirus in the Russian Federation are associated with an effective healthcare system. Asked by a journalist what went wrong in the Russian authorities' attempts to contain the spread of infection, Peskov said: "Nothing went wrong except the coronavirus itself."

As of June 10, 493,657 cases of coronavirus infection have been identified in Russia since the beginning of the epidemic. 252,783 people have recovered, 6,358 have died. More than 13.5 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted.

According to Mediazona’s calculations , more than 11 thousand people infected with coronavirus have died in Russia since the beginning of the epidemic. The Moscow Department of Health reported that 15,713 deaths were registered in the capital in May 2020, which is 5,715 more than that month in 2019. According to officials, 92% of excess deaths are due to coronavirus.