COVID-19 pandemic in Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 31st of January 2020, Russia confirmed its first two cases of COVID-19. Both patients were Chinese nationals, one in the Siberian city of Tyumen and one in Chita in the Russian Far East. The country had been watching the outbreak unfold in China for weeks. Early measures focused on restricting the China-Russia border and scaling up testing. For a time, Russia appeared to be keeping the virus out. Then COVID-19 found a different route in. Within months, Russia went from early lockdowns to a vaccine announcement that would be heard around the world. And all the while, a question was building that would outlast the emergency measures themselves: how accurately was Russia counting its dead?

• 2. Lockdown in Waves

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  On the 2nd of March 2020, Moscow confirmed its first COVID-19 case. The patient was a young man who had fallen ill on the 21st of February while on holiday in Italy. He returned to Russia on the 23rd of February and appeared at a clinic with symptoms four days later. Saint Petersburg confirmed its first case on the 5th of March. The patient was an Italian student who had arrived from Italy at the end of February. Six more cases were confirmed on the 6th of March, five in Moscow and one in Nizhny Novgorod, all linked to Italy. The first death reported in Moscow alongside a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis came on the 19th of March. The patient was a 79-year-old woman hospitalised on the 13th of March, but her death was not officially counted as a coronavirus fatality. The first two deaths formally recorded as COVID-19 deaths were confirmed on the 25th of March, affecting Moscow residents aged 73 and 88.

  That same day, the 25th of March, President Putin announced the postponement of the 2020 Russian constitutional referendum. He declared the week starting on the 30th of March a nationwide non-working period. Extended twice, the period ran until the 11th of May. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin issued a stay-at-home order on the 29th of March. Muscovites were permitted to leave home only for emergency care, the nearest shop or pharmacy, or walks within 100 metres of their residence. International flights were suspended on the 27th of March. Three days later, all border crossings were closed.

  On the 11th of April, Sobyanin signed a decree introducing a digital pass system for Moscow and Moscow Oblast. Residents needed a permit to use any form of transport, public or private. The passes became mandatory on the 15th of April. On the 29th of April, Sobyanin announced plans for 10,000 new hospital beds in temporary facilities. The following day, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced he had tested positive for the virus.

  The 9th of May brought a reduced commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany. In place of the usual parade, Moscow held an air show and President Putin laid flowers at the Eternal Flame near the Kremlin. The postponed Victory Day Parade was finally held in Red Square on the 24th of June. Thirty major cities across Russia cancelled their own events that day.

  By the 15th of July, Russia had abolished its 14-day arrival quarantine. Arrivals now needed to present a negative test result in English or Russian. On the 1st of September, Russia's confirmed case total crossed one million, making it the fourth country in the world to reach that number.

• 3. Sputnik V

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  On the 11th of August 2020, President Putin announced that Russia had registered the world's first coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine had been developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. Putin said one of his daughters had received it. The previous day, the Association of Clinical Research Organisations had written to the Health Ministry. The organisation, a union of pharmaceutical companies in Russia, urged a delay in registration. Phase III clinical trials had not yet concluded.

  Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said 20 countries had already requested a combined 1 billion doses. The fund was responsible for promoting the vaccine internationally. Dmitriev confirmed that Phase III trials involving several thousand participants were expected to begin in August. Russia planned to produce 30 million doses domestically. A further 170 million were to be manufactured abroad. The vaccine became known as Sputnik V, invoking the Soviet satellite that had opened the space age.

  By the 31st of August 2020, Rospotrebnadzor head Anna Popova confirmed that schools would reopen the following day on a full-time basis. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova had previously noted that 92% of universities were starting their academic year normally. On the 5th of September, Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu reported his vaccination on state television. The first batches of the Gamaleya vaccine entered civilian circulation on the 8th of September.

  Mass vaccination began in Moscow on the 5th of December 2020, starting with doctors, medical workers, and teachers. All regions had been included by the 15th of December. In January 2021, the programme opened to the general population. By the 20th of July 2021-33.19 million people had received at least one dose and 21.6 million were fully vaccinated. Despite the early registration and broad international interest, many Russians remained reluctant to be vaccinated. That hesitancy would carry consequences as new variants arrived.

• 4. The Hidden Toll

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  By June 2020, Russia's Federal State Statistics Service, known as Rosstat, had published data that contradicted the government's official death count. Rosstat reported that 2,712 people with a COVID-19 diagnosis had died in April. The national crisis centre's figure for the same month was 1,162. Rosstat's methodology was broader: it counted deaths where COVID-19 was the primary cause and deaths where the virus played only a supporting role. It also included patients who had tested negative but were later identified as having died of COVID-19.

  Rosstat's head, Pavel Malkov, explained the discrepancy in an interview published on the 23rd of June. The agency drew its data from the Civil Registry Office. Death certificates could take up to 45 days to complete after testing. The national crisis centre's figures were entered manually in real time. Malkov argued that statistics are "practically impossible to manipulate." He said any attempt to distort the input data would become immediately visible in the final numbers.

  In July 2020, Rosstat recorded 181,479 deaths across Russia. That was the highest monthly total since August 2010, far above the preceding five-year average of roughly 150,000. By November 2020, all-cause deaths were 78,541 higher than in November 2019, an increase of 55.6%. The national task force's official coronavirus death count for November was 11,905; Rosstat's COVID-related figure was 35,645. Looking at the full April-November 2020 period, Rosstat counted 114,268 deaths with a COVID-19 diagnosis. Excess deaths over the same period exceeded 300,000.

  Moscow's health department initially reported 636 COVID-19 deaths in April 2020. In May, using a new methodology, it revised that figure to 1,561. For May itself, the city's official toll was first given as 1,895, then raised to 5,260 in June. Saint Petersburg registered 6,427 death certificates in May 2020, compared with 4,875 in May 2019. The city's official COVID-19 death count for May was 171.

  In March 2020, Anastasia Vasilyeva, leader of the Doctors' Alliance, published videos with a pointed allegation. She was also doctor to opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Her claim: authorities were concealing COVID-19 deaths by recording them as pneumonia or acute respiratory infection. Health officials denied the allegation. The WHO's representative in Russia, Dr. Vujnovic, also expressed scepticism. Putin addressed the controversy, saying the government was not concealing cases, though it might not have the full picture.

  The Financial Times and the New York Times pointed to Moscow's excess death data in mid-2020. Moscow had registered approximately 1,800 more deaths in April 2020 than its monthly average. The Financial Times identified a similar surge in Saint Petersburg and estimated the true COVID-19 death toll could be around 70% higher than reported. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called those reports "disinformation." Moscow's health department maintained that autopsies were conducted in all suspected cases, making the city's mortality data "exceedingly accurate."

  Russia ranked fourth lowest in 28-day statistical noise level out of 78 countries studied. The data showed far lower noise than comparable countries, by a factor of roughly 10-100. Researchers described the pattern as sub-Poissonian, meaning the daily case count varied far less than random chance would predict.

  In June 2021, Deputy Minister of Digital Development Oleg Kachanov cited the national recovery register while discussing an integration with the vaccine passport database. The register showed 9 million recorded recoveries. The official case count at that time stood at 5 million. Physicist Sergey Shpilkin then used sequentially numbered recovery certificates in a crowdsourced analysis. His findings showed total recoveries in the register exceeding 29 million, roughly 4.5 times the official pandemic case count of 6 million. Demographer Alexei Raksha attributed Russia's population decline of 997,000 people in the period October 2020-September 2021 primarily to the pandemic. On the 25th of April 2020, doctors had published a running public list of colleagues who had died during the pandemic. By the 19th of November, that list carried 838 names.

• 5. Later Waves and War

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  A Levada Centre poll in November 2021 found that 48% of Russians said they were concerned about being infected with COVID-19. Fifty percent said they were not. Thirty-nine percent personally knew someone who had survived a severe COVID-19 infection. Twenty-seven percent knew someone who had died from it. Sixty-one percent said they believed COVID-19 was a biological weapon. That belief was most common among respondents aged 55 and over, at 68%, compared with 43% among younger respondents.

  During the summer and fall of 2021, Russia experienced severe waves of the Delta variant. Many Russians had declined to be vaccinated. Mortality rates reached record levels. Authorities introduced QR codes for vaccinated individuals, restricting entry to malls, restaurants, and other public spaces for the unvaccinated.

  When the Omicron variant arrived at the start of 2022, the government imposed no strict restrictions. Its attention had shifted to a different crisis. Russia's invasion of Ukraine began on the 24th of February 2022, and media coverage of the pandemic faded rapidly. By the end of 2022, most COVID measures had been lifted, with officials declaring the situation under control. By that point, the country had recorded nearly 10.5 million confirmed cases and nearly 310,000 official deaths. That placed Russia tenth globally in confirmed cases, behind the United States, India, France, Brazil, Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan.

  Russia Today's Russian-language edition in 2021 ran an intensive campaign supporting COVID-19 vaccination. At the same time, its German, Spanish, and English editions ran equally aggressive anti-vaccination content, sharing misinformation. Journalist Lybov Sobol and others documented the feedback loop. Russian anti-vaccination communities were translating stories from RT's foreign editions back into Russian and circulating them as domestic propaganda against the vaccine.