Russia’s federal statistics agency Rosstat said Friday that nearly 75,000 people died of coronavirus in the country in October, making it the deadliest month of the entire pandemic.
The agency reported that total deaths since Russia recorded its first case stood at more than 520,000, the third worst fatality count in the world behind the United States and Brazil.
Authorities in Moscow have been accused of downplaying the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and Rosstat’s figure — released late Friday — painted a far darker picture than official figures suggest.
The Rosstat tally was considerably higher than an official government website tracking the pandemic, which says total Covid deaths are 278,857.
Those figures only take into account fatalities where the virus was established as the primary cause of death after an autopsy.
