Moscow
Russia on Saturday said that it recorded more than 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, a toll that is still far lower than in other countries with major outbreaks.
The number of deaths has now reached 10,027, the government information website said, up by 168 from Friday.
Russia has confirmed 674,515 cases, the third largest total in the world, although the daily infection rate has been falling over the last month.
The country’s death toll is much lower than in other countries with large outbreaks, raising questions over possible underreporting of deaths.
Russia has acknowledged that the death figure on the government website only includes cases where the virus was classed as the main cause of death on the death certificate.
The official statistics agency has released national death data for April alone, where the toll — of 2,712 — is more than double the government’s total of 1,152 for that month.
That is because it uses a broader definition on the basis of World Health Organization recommendations and includes cases where the victim tested positive but the virus was not classified as the main cause of death, or where there was no positive test but an autopsy ruled the virus was the main cause of death.
Moscow city health department also released data on deaths in May using this method of classification, showing 5,260 virus-related deaths that month.
By contrast, the government website still says that some 3,929 people in total have died so far from the virus just in Moscow.
United States recorded 57,683 new coronavirus cases on Friday, the third consecutive day with record numbers of new infections.
The new record case count came as infections surge in southern and western states, and as the United States – the hardest-hit country in the world in the coronavirus pandemic – heads into the July Fourth holiday weekend.
Alabama and six other US states reported record increases in coronavirus cases on Friday as Florida’s most populous county imposed a curfew ahead of the Independence Day weekend and Arkansas joined a push toward mandating mask-wearing in public.
North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alaska, Missouri, Idaho and Alabama all registered new daily highs in cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Texas hit a new peak for hospitalisations, with one doctor calling for a “complete lockdown” in the state to get the virus under control.
The daily US tally of cases stood at 53,483 late on Friday, below the previous day’s record 55,405. North Carolina, for one, reported 951 hospitalisations and 2,099 cases, both record highs.
Bill Saffo, mayor of Wilmington, North Carolina, said many infections had been traced to large gatherings and predicted a further jump after the holiday weekend as people flouted guidelines on social distancing and masks.
“We know that the spread is going to happen. We know probably in about two weeks we’ll see a spike from the July 4th weekend,” Saffo told CNN.
Despite the jump in infections, the average daily death toll in the United States has gradually declined in recent weeks, a reflection of the growing proportion of positive tests among younger, healthier people who are less prone to severe outcomes.
However, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned that the impact on fatalities from the recent surge, which started in mid-June, had yet to be seen. “Deaths lag at least two weeks and can lag even more,” he told “Fox & Friends” on Friday.
His remarks came hours ahead of a trip by President Donald Trump to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota where he was expected to give a speech to thousands of supporters in which he will rail against the “left wing mob” and view a fireworks display at the landmark depicting four US presidents in stone.
The visit has drawn criticism from Native Americans, who say the remote area is sacred to them, as well as health experts who discourage large congregations of people.
Trump, whose handling of the pandemic has come under harsh criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, has repeatedly sought to dismiss the jump in cases as a function of more tests and again this week predicted the virus would “disappear.”—AFP
