Russia updates statistics on virus-linked deaths in 2020

 Russia’s updated statistics on coronavirus-linked deaths show that 162,429 people with COVID-19 h died in pandemic last year, a number much higher than previously reported by government officials. data released Monday by Russia’s state statistics ncy, Rosstat, were for COVID-19 deaths between April and December, including cases where virus wasn't main cause of death and where virus was suspected but t confirmed.

highest number of deaths — 44,435 — was registered by Rosstat in December, when infections in Russia soared and officials regularly reported over 27,000 daily new coronavirus cases. ncy's count is much higher than 77,068 deaths that have been reported by Russian government’s coronavirus task force so far, including deaths that occurred in January and February.Russian officials ascribe differences between numbers reported by task force and Rosstat to different counting methods, saying task force only includes deaths where COVID-19 was main cause.

Officials also said task force uses data collected from medical facilities, while Rosstat takes its numbers from civil registry offices where process of registering a death is finalized.

Rosstat started releasing detailed monthly updates on virus-linked deaths after task force’s relatively low death count, which is reflected in numbers released by World Health Organization, raised eyebrows in West as Russia’s tally of confirmed coronavirus cases became one of world’s largest.Russia has so far reported more than 3.9 million confirmed coronavirus cases.