Speaking at a press conference, the executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme said Russia’s stats are an outlier compared to other European nations, but that he does not believe the country is covering up the scale of pandemic.
“The low death rate is difficult to understand in the context of the population and the health systems across the European region being quite similar in terms of their sophistication and availability,” Ryan said. “The age profile of people in the Russian Federation is not greatly different to that of other nations; neither is the profile of people with underlying conditions.”
Despite having the third most confirmed cases, Russia is 13th in terms of official Covid-19 deaths, which makes it a significant outlier. For example, Russia (with 502,436) has almost double the known infections of the United Kingdom (290,143), but one sixth the number of deaths (6,532 compared to 41,128).
Ryan stressed that the approach to counting fatalities varies from country to country, and that he does not believe Russia is purposefully downplaying its figures, saying: “I don’t think that’s been done in any negative way, not in a systematic fashion.”
The WHO official said one reason for Russia’s low mortality rate could be mass testing, which was ramped up early on, but noted that in other countries with a large number of tests, mortality is still higher.
Speaking to journalists on Thursday, President Vladimir Putin’s official spokesperson Dmitry Peskov disagreed that the statistics were “unusual” and said the media should wait for Russian “epidemiologists to give appropriate explanations” about the methodology.
Earlier this month, in an interview with TV network CNN, Peskov denied any statistical manipulation by the Russian authorities, saying the low mortality rate reflects the “effective” functioning of the healthcare system.