Moscow’s health department said authorities conducted autopsies on 100% of suspected coronavirus victims and confirmed that 639 people died directly of coronavirus complications in April, in a statement on Wednesday.
The health department hit back at media reports saying it was under-reporting Covid-19 fatalities, saying its data was “absolutely open,” but acknowledging that it only counts deaths that were found through postmortem autopsy to have been caused directly by coronavirus complications.
“In other cases, it’s impossible to put Covid-19 as the cause of death,” the health department said, acknowledging the April spike in mortality rates.
City health officials argue that a mandatory autopsy is performed on all patients with suspected coronavirus to establish diagnosis and cause of death “in contrast with the practice in most other countries,” adding, “post-mortem diagnoses and causes of death recorded in Moscow are therefore extremely accurate, and mortality data is completely open. It is impossible to name the cause of death as Covid-19 in other cases.”
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