© Ilya Pitalev / Sputnik
Doctors at a clinic in Moscow. May 18, 2020.
Russia's Embassy in the US has accused the
NYT of refusing to publish a comparison of the Covid-19 death rates in Moscow, London, and New York. The paper earlier accused Russia of "underreporting" the death rate from the disease.
On May 11, the
New York Times ran a story which claimed to have solved the "mystery" of Russia's relatively lower death rate from Covid-19, which is below the world average. Citing official statistics, the paper noted that Moscow's number of overall deaths in April exceeded its five-year average for the same period by more than 1,700. Together with the city's official death toll from Covid-19 - just 642 at the time - this indicated "significant underreporting" by the authorities, the NYT said.
On Monday, the paper published a letter by Moscow's top health official, Alexey Khripun, who said the figures alone "do not disclose the cause of death and vary widely in any event," adding that the Russian capital saw 11,846 more deaths in April, an increase of 1,841 over April 2019 - but of only 985 for the same month in 2018. Also, only 639 of the April 2020 deaths were "attributable to Covid-19," Khripun wrote.
Comment: See also: