This Russian Model Makes A Video In A Mortuary, Reveals A Covered Up Case Of COVID-19
JAKARTA - The former Russian beauty queen claims to have discovered a conspiracy in her country after sharing footage of the bodies of COVID-19 victims piled high in morgues.
Olga Kagarlitskaya was horrified to see bodies in black bags stacked on top of each other in a morgue in Samara, in southwest Russia.
The 37-year-old woman came to the morgue to retrieve the body of her father - a doctor suspected of contracting COVID-19 while taking the victim by ambulance to the hospital.
Kagarlitskaya filmed inside the morgue where her father's body was kept after being shocked by the number of other bodies in the facility.
He now claims Russian authorities are trying to cover up the number of healthcare workers killed by COVID-19 by faking death certificates to show they died in some other way.
In the footage shared online, the 2005 Miss Samara contestant stated: "Our official statistics are seven people killed in Samara (from the coronavirus). Here we see more than seven."
Kagarlitskaya later claimed morgue workers told him they were processing the bodies of 50 COVID-19 victims on the day he visited.
He went on to claim health officials were trying to manipulate the details of the health workers' deaths to avoid paying around Rp.421 million in compensation to those killed by COVID-19.
He said his father had to wait two days for an ambulance to take him to the hospital where he worked for 23 years.
While being treated, Kagarlitskaya's father was put on a ventilator - but sadly died after more than two weeks of treatment.
Screenshot of video footage of the bodies of COVID-19 victims piled high in the morgue (Photo: Olga Kagarlitskaya)
"A morgue employee told me that I could not expect reliable and independent research (on causes of death) because they focused on calls from above, on conversations with the ministry, with Moscow," the model claimed as quoted by the Daily Star, Tuesday, November 17th.
"All this is done so as not to pay compensation to the families of medical workers who died while carrying out their duties."
Kagarlitskaya's allegations followed comments by Alexey Raksha, a former demographic officer at Russia's Federal Statistical Service who resigned in protest at the alleged manipulation of COVID-19 deaths in Russia.
The 42-year-old accused the Russian government of twisting statistics to show that "things are better here than anywhere".
Official Russian government figures reported 352 deaths as of Sunday - but Raksha said 2,400 to 2,800 Russians were dying of the coronavirus per day.