MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia registered 162,758 deaths in June, up 18.6% from the same month last year, data from the state statistics service Rosstat showed on Friday.
That included 11,917 deaths of people suspected or confirmed as having COVID-19, Rosstat data showed. Of these, COVID-19 was registered as the primary cause of death in 5,448 cases.
Many countries are looking at such “all-cause mortality” statistics as a guide to understanding the full impact of the virus, as some deaths caused by COVID-19 may go unrecorded, while the death toll from other illnesses may also rise at a time when healthcare systems are under strain.
There were 3.1% more deaths in Russia in the first half of 2020 compared with the same period last year, Rosstat data showed.
In May, there were 11.9% more deaths than the previous May.
As of Friday, Russia had reported 877,135 cases of the novel coronavirus, the world’s fourth-largest total, and its death toll from the virus stood at 14,725.
(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov, Anastasia Teterevleva, Vladimir Soldatkin and Alexander Marrow; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
