Press Release, 19.11.2020

Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chairman of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko, sent an inquiry to the regional Ministry of Healthcare demanding to open data on the reasons for the increase in mortality in 2020.

The analysis of open data of Rosstat (the Russian statistical agency) in the Chelyabinsk region shows that 2,043 more deaths were registered in the nine months of 2020 compared to same period of 2019. The excess mortality in relation to the average mortality for the past three years amounted to 1,872 cases (34,499 in 2017, 34,739 in 2018, and 34,362 in 2019).

“The graph shows what price we may have paid for the amendments to the Constitution and the elections, as there are conspicuous coincidences of the growth in the graph with these events. The excess mortality rate in comparison with the past three years, in our opinion, more objectively reflects the real picture of the development of the pandemic (data on mortality are recorded by the Registry Office), rather than data on the detected cases of coronavirus,” Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chairman of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko, said.

At the same time, the peak growth in excess mortality in 2020 was recorded in July (plus 1,717 cases) and in September (plus 893 cases) as of the average of the past three years.

Since April 2020, Rosstat stopped publishing data on the number of deaths as of the main classes of causes of death, however, for example, the Moscow Department of Healthcare on its official website publishes information on the reasons for the excess mortality in the city on a monthly basis. According to the Department of Healthcare, COVID-19 as the main or concomitant cause of death justifies for the majority of cases (from 92 per cent to 100 per cent) of excess mortality in Moscow.

In the Chelyabinsk region, according to Rosstat, COVID-19 as the main or concomitant cause of death for the nine months of 2020 was registered in 1,045 cases (55.8 per cent of all excess mortality in comparison with the same periods of the past three years). However, in July, COVID-19 as the main or concomitant cause of death justifies for only 16.2 per cent of all excess deaths per month, and in September it amounted to 37 per cent, which is very unlikely (without some external cause, the average mortality rates cannot differ so much).

One can analyse the data on excess mortality in the Russian regions using the data from the Rosstat website.