toll includes both those where the virus was determined to the main cause of death, as well as where the main cause of death was determined to be something else. 1,270 deaths are where the virus was determined to be the main cause, 435 deaths where the virus had a "significant influence", 617 deaths where the virus was present but did not play a major role, and 390 deaths where the person tested negative but it was later determined to be the main cause of death. officials including tatiana golikova said that the changes in the counting method follows who recommendations. she also said that the figures represent a 2.6% death rate among those infected, and that the death rate for may will be higher. pavel malkov, the head of rosstat, said in an interview with rbk published on 23 june that the statistics agency had published a higher death toll for april because it receives more complete data than the national coronavirus crisis centre and that it has a different calculation methodology, saying that the agency receives data from the civil registry office and deals with death certificates that can take up to 45 days to complete following testing while the crisis centre publishes operational data manually entered into the system. he also said that "one of the biggest secrets in statistics is that it's practically impossible to manipulate" and that "if we're talking about a qualitative indicator with a developed methodology, then any attempt to affect the final numbers by distorting the input data will become immediately evident". on 10 july, rosstat published data which said that covid-19 was confirmed or assumed to be the main cause of death for 7,444 people who died in may. an additional 5,008 people with a covid-19 diagnosis were determined to have died from other diseases, with the virus being a catalyst for 1,530 of those deaths. the death toll reported by the coronavirus crisis centre for may was 3,633. the data also said that 172,914 people had died in russia in may, an increase of more than 18,000 compared to the same month last year. on 7 august, rosstat published mortality data for june which included 11,917 deaths for people with covid-19, with the virus being determined or believed to have been the primary cause of death for 7,037 of them, with 1,589 without pcr verification. the total number of people with covid-19 who died from april to june was therefore 27,411 according to rosstat's data, with a death rate of 4.2% of confirmed cases. on 4 september, rosstat published mortality data for july which included 10,079 deaths for people with covid-19, with the virus determined or suspected to have been the primary cause of death for 5,922 of them. the death toll reported by the national coronavirus crisis centre for july was 4,522. rosstat's data also showed that 181,479 deaths were registered in july, the highest monthly number of deaths since august 2010, compared to an average of around 150,000 over the past five years. on 2 october, rosstat published mortality data for august which included 7,463 deaths for people with covid-19, with the virus identified and determined to have been the main cause of death for 3,222 of them. the number of people with covid-19 who died from april to august 2020 was 45,663 according to rosstat's data. on 6 november, rosstat published mortality data for september which included 9,798 deaths for people with covid-19, with the virus identified and determined to have been the main cause of death for 4,329 of them. the number of people with covid-19 who died from april to september 2020 was 55,671 according to rosstat's data. on 10 december, rosstat published mortality data for october which included 22,571 deaths for people with covid-19, with the virus identified and determined to have been the main case of death for 11,630 of them. the number of people with covid-19 who died from april to october 2020 was therefore 78,623 according to rosstat's data. 47,000 more deaths in october were also recorded compared to the previous year. on 28 december, rosstat published mortality data for november which included 35,645 deaths for people with covid-19, with the virus identified or determined to have been the main cause of death for 19,626 of them. 78,541 more deaths in november were also recorded compared to the previous year, an increase of 55.6%, while the national task force reported only 11,905 coronavirus deaths over the month. deputy prime minister tatyana golikova said that more than 80% of excess deaths were related to the coronavirus. in total, 230,000 more deaths were reported in 2020 compared to the previous year (including january–march). rosstat data showed 116,030 deaths can be attributed directly to the coronavirus by 28 december 2020, and over 200,000 by march 2021. on 2 april, the coronavirus related deaths enumerated 225,572 fatalities, and over 316,000 by august 2021. regional on 28 may, moscow's health department said that the death toll for the city for april was 1,561 using a new methodology, where originally it was 636. it said that this included 756 people diagnosed with the virus but determined to have died of other causes and 169 people who tested negative but were suspected to have had the virus. the official death toll for the city or country had not been revised. on 3 june, the city of st. petersburg reported a 32% higher death rate in may compared to the previous year. the city government said that 6,427 death certificates were issued, compared to 4,875 the previous year. for the same month, the official coronavirus death toll was 171 people. on 10 june, moscow's health department increased the city's coronavirus death toll from 1,895 to 5,260 for may. it said that "covid-19 as a main or an accompanying cause of death was registered in 5,260 cases". it also said that the difference was due to changes made by the health ministry in the approach of counting deaths, saying that "new recommendations allowed us to improve the calculation of cases where covid was the main cause of the death and of those where it became, with a high degree of probability, a catalyst...for other illnesses". controversies in march 2020, there was some scepticism about the accuracy of russia's reported infection figures. anastasia vasilyeva, leader of the doctors' alliance organisation loosely aligned to the russian opposition and doctor for opposition figure alexei navalny, made a series of videos accusing the authorities of concealing the true number of coronavirus cases by using pneumonia and acute respiratory infection as a diagnosis instead. health officials rejected the allegation. the who's representative to russia, dr. vujnovic, expressed scepticism at the allegation. president putin later addressed concerns about statistics, saying that the government is not covering up the number of cases, though might not have the full picture. analysis of the statistical properties of the official russian daily infection counts found that the preferred noise model of the russian data through to may 2021 was sub-poissonian, with a factor of about 10 to 100 less noise than for other countries with similarly high infection counts, and the fourth lowest 28-day noise level out of 78 countries. in may 2020, as russia's mortality rate was much lower compared to other hard-hit countries, a number of media outlets including the financial times and new york times said that the number of deaths in the country may have been under-reported, based on a spike in mortality rates officially reported in moscow where approximately 1,800 more deaths were registered in april compared to the monthly average, while the financial times noted a similar surge in st. petersburg, concluding that there could be around 70% more deaths than reported. the reported excess deaths were considerably smaller compared to other hard-hit areas in other countries. foreign ministry spokeswoman maria zakharova called the reports "disinformation" and said that letters demanding a retraction would be sent. moscow's health department rejected the media reports, saying that autopsies were being conducted in all suspected coronavirus deaths, which was why "post-mortem diagnoses in moscow and causes of death, in the end, are exceedingly accurate, and the mortality data absolutely transparent". it said that over 60% of deaths in the city with suspected coronavirus infections were ascribed to other causes. the world health organization's guidelines on reporting deaths, issued in mid-april, states that "deaths due to covid-19" should be considered as such "unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to covid disease." the federal state statistics service's counting process runs contrary to the who's guidelines. russian media have reported contradictory policy of russia today, whose russian-language edition in 2021 started an intensive campaign in support for covid-19 vaccination, while at the same time other language versions (german, spanish, english etc.) run equally aggressive campaign against these vaccinations, sharing anti-vaccination misinformation targeted at these audiences. lybov sobol and other journalists pointed out even if rt leadership believes these news streams are targeted at separate audiences, russian anti-vaccination community is promptly picking up stories published in foreign rt editions and translates them back into russian and uses for domestic anti-vaccine propaganda. number of cases in the recovery register in june 2021 deputy digital development minister oleg kachanov quoted data from official record of recoveries in the context of its integration with database used for issuance of "covid passport" certificates, and the database had 9 million recoveries recorded, which was almost twice as the official case statistics (5 million) at that time. further analysis of crowdsourced recovery certificate numbers (which were sequentially numbered) by physicist sergey shpilkin indicated that the total number of recoveries in the register exceeds 29 millions, which is 4.5x higher than the official number of cases from the beginning of pandemics (6 million).