"Mediazona" treats Chechen COVID-19 statistics as Russia's most non-transparent

The official COVID-19 death statistics fails to explain the dramatic increase in mortality in Russia, says the "Mediazona" study released on November 23. The authors have put Chechnya and North Ossetia in the top ten Russian regions notable for the least transparent statistics of coronavirus deaths.

According to the data of the "Rosstat" (Russian Federal State Statistics Service), in April-September 2020, 106,000 more people died in Russia than the previous five-year average over the same period. According to "Rospotrebnadzor" (Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing), only 20,698 of these 106,000 people died from coronavirus.

The following four regions of Southern Russia have country's worst performance: Dagestan, where the mortality during the pandemic went up by 58.6% compared to the same periods in 2015-2019; Chechnya (53%), Ingushetia (37.7%) and Kalmykia (30.2%). This figure is also high in North Ossetia, at 26.5%.

The authors of the report point out that Chechnya is one of those Russian regions where high excessive mortality is not explained in any way. They have placed Chechnya in the second place after Bashkortostan by the non-transparency of counting the coronavirus deaths. North Ossetia is ranked eighth there.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on November 23, 2020 at 06:57 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.