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Russia’s healthcare workers are dying of COVID-19 much more often than the general population
Source: Meduza
Alla Samoylova, the head of Russia’s public health watchdog, Roszdravnadzor, said that since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, 489 medical workers in Russia have died of the disease. (Roszdravnadzor’s press service later issued a statement, claiming these figures were “unofficial”). According to data from the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), Russia’s 147 million person population included 2.14 million healthcare workers in 2019 (this includes doctors, as well as junior and mid-level medical and pharmaceutical personnel). Given that Russia has seen 7,660 total deaths from the coronavirus so far, this means that medical workers are dying from the disease nearly five times more often than the rest of Russia’s residents. Nevertheless, at the end of May — more than two months after the start of the epidemic — Anna Popova, the head of Russia’s public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, maintained that the mortality rate among healthcare workers was no higher than the national average.
Cover photo: Petr Kovalev / TASS / Scanpix / LETA