Surpassing Brazil, Russia's COVID-19 Death Toll Is Now The Second Highest In The World, November Was The Deadliest

Ilustrasi COVID-19 di Rusia. (Wikimedia Commons / Mos.ru / Press Service of the Mayor and Government of Moscow, Denis Grishkin)

JAKARTA - Russia has surpassed Brazil to have the world's second-highest death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, behind the United States, data from Russia's state statistics service and Reuters tally showed on Thursday.

Statistical service Rosstat said 87.527 people had died from coronavirus-related causes in November, making it Russia's deadliest month since the start of the pandemic.

Russia's total death toll from the pandemic stood at 658.634, according to a Reuters tally based on Rosstat figures for the end of November and data from the coronavirus task force for December, overtaking Brazil which had 618.800 deaths.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the United States is higher at 825.663, according to a Reuters tally, but the population is twice that of Russia.

Reuters calculations also showed Russia recorded more than 835.000 excess deaths from the start of the outbreak in April 2020 to the end of November, compared with the 2015-19 average.

Some epidemiologists say overcounting deaths is the best way to assess the true impact of a pandemic.

So far, Russia's death toll has not been affected by the Omicron variant and was largely due to a spike in infections in October and November, which health authorities blamed on the Delta variant and a slow vaccination campaign.

Separately citing TASS, Russia recorded 21.073 new confirmed COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours on Thursday, with the total number of infections reaching 10.479.344 according to the anti-coronavirus crisis center.

The number of COVID-19 deaths in Russia over the past 24 hours has increased by 926, compared with 932 the day before. Thus, the country has recorded less than 1,000 daily deaths caused by coronavirus infections for one week.

For your information, on Thursday, Russian authorities ordered hospitals to prepare for a possible spike in COVID-19 cases.