Russia recorded a dramatic increase in mortality in 2020 fuelled by the coronavirus pandemic, according to new official figures released Monday that showed more than 162,000 virus-related deaths.
The preliminary estimates published by the Rosstat statistics agency showed that mortality had increased by 17.9 percent compared to 2019, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said Monday.
"This excess mortality includes mortality due to Covid," she said during a coronavirus briefing broadcast on state television.
Rosstat's figures showed that between April when the pandemic hit Russia and December, the country saw 162,429 coronavirus-related fatalities.
December was the deadliest month of the pandemic last year, with 44,435 virus-related deaths.
According to Rosstat's breakdown, 31,550 of those fatalities were mainly due to Covid-19, while in another 12,885 the patient tested positive but the virus was not considered the main cause of death.
In total, 2.12 million people died in Russia in 2020 compared to 1.8 million in 2019, according to Rosstat, with the pandemic exacerbating a demographic crisis the country has faced since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Last year Russia's population shrunk by more than 510,000 people, the largest drop since the mid-2000s, according to official statistics published in late January.
Russia has prided itself on its response to Covid-19, pointing to a low fatality rate as evidence of its success.
But for much of the pandemic, Russia only published partial figures, counting only fatalities where Covid-19 was found to be the primary cause of death after autopsy.
By Monday, Russia's health officials had reported just 77,068 virus fatalities.
Unlike when the pandemic struck in the spring, the government did impose a lockdown when the country was hit with a second wave of infections in the fall.
In the hopes of buttressing a struggling economy officials instead pinned their hopes on the country's homemade vaccine, Sputnik V, which has been available to the public since December.
The authorities have recently said that the pandemic is on the wane and in Moscow, the epicentre of the country's outbreak, lockdown measures have almost entirely been lifted.
On Monday, Golikova said that virus-related deaths were down 11 percent in January compared to December.