A man receives a dose of Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac) vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Moscow, Russia, July 15, 2021. Photo credit Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters
Despite surging death tolls, authorities have declined to introduce tough restrictions or even strictly enforce ones in place like mask wearing.
Calculations of so-called “excess deaths” from publicly available mortality data — considered internationally as the best way of assessing the pandemic’s true toll — show that Russia has recorded nearly 550,000 more deaths than in an average year between June 2021 and the start of the pandemic.
That is nearly four times higher than the official toll of 150,000, provided by Russia’s government coronavirus task force. It also does not take into account June and July, which have been the deadliest months of the third wave for the country.
[We] “are in the heart of a storm, which no one even tried to prevent,” Alexander Dragan, a data analyst who has tracked Russia’s pandemic statistics, wrote in a Medium post this month.The result has been the virus — accelerated by the delta variant — has burned through Russia almost unrestricted.
Navy Vet