The impact of the pandemic on Russia’s demographic – additional information from Rosstat

RUSSIA ECONOMICS - In Brief 14 Dec 2020 by Alexander Kudrin

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In recent days Russia’s daily infection cases fluctuated around 28K, while the death toll, according to Rospotrebnadzor, kept fluctuating around an upward trend and once exceeded 600. Rospotrebnadzor is an agency, that apart from various other duties is in charge of collecting real-time statistics on the virus (including registered daily cases and the death toll by regions) and releasing daily flash estimates on the numbers and comments on the epidemiological situation in the country.Last week Rosstat released October demographic statistics, including data and comments on the monthly death toll related to the virus. It came as no surprise that the flash estimates published earlier looked different from Rosstat’s statistics. Indeed, even though the country’s overall demographic situation started to deteriorate about a year and a half ago, negative trends have strengthened since 2Q20. Earlier, some Russian officials repeatedly mentioned that the daily death toll is real-time data, a kind of flash estimate, which could be subject to revisions, as in some cases, the cause of the death needed a confirmation (after an autopsy, for instance).Rosstat’s publication shed some light on this issue, though some questions were unanswered. For instance, Rosstat reported that in October, the novel virus was the primary and the only cause people of the death of 11610 people, while in 2266 cases, the virus was assumed to be the main reason but requiring additional confirmation. In the case of other 1711 people, the virus accompanied other diseases and caused complications, which resulted in earlier death. The virus didn’t cause deaths in 6964 cases as the latter resulted from other reas...