Monday

2nd Oct 2023

Is Russia lying to WHO on virus data?

  • Russian president Vladimir Putin (in centre on the right) at a coronavirus situation room in Moscow (Photo: Kremlin.ru)

Russia has defended its credibility on coronavirus data, after Belarus said its neighbouring country was "ablaze" with infections - and the EU accused Moscow of other "blatant lies".

"The reasons why the officially confirmed number of those infected in Russia at this stage remains relatively low may be of a complex character," a spokesman for the Russian EU embassy told EUobserver.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

  • Russia using CCTV to monitor people's movement (Photo: Kremlin.ru)

"Such facts should not be a basis for developing conspiracy theories," he said.

Russia was sharing up-to-date figures with international partners, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) and EU countries, in a "fast-changing" situation, he added.

"At the moment when I got [EUobserver's] request citing 93 cases [in Russia], it was already more than 100 confirmed and officially declared cases. And this figure, unfortunately, but objectively is about to increase," he said.

Russia had earlier reported 93 cases of coronavirus infection and no deaths to the WHO situation centre.

It updated that figure to 114 infections on Tuesday and to 147 by Thursday (19 March).

The country of 145m people has extensive business and tourism links with virus hotspots China, the EU, and Iran and has not imposed an internal lockdown.

Yet Russia's figures were lower than in micro-state Luxembourg (203 infections by Thursday) and worlds away from Italy (35,713 infections and 2,978 deaths).

Russia's testing authority, Rospotrebnadzor, also said it had tested over 116,000 people, making the country's ratio of tests to positive diagnoses (0.1%) by far the lowest in the world.

The Russian spokesman's mention of "conspiracy theories" came after Belarusian president Aleksander Lukashenko accused the Kremlin of vastly under-reporting the true picture.

"All of Russia is ablaze with coronavirus," Lukashenko had said on Monday, without providing evidence.

His comment did "not reflect reality", the Russian government also said in a statement.

Russian anomaly

Meanwhile, the anomaly on Russia infections might be due to lack of knowledge on how the virus spreads, the Russian EU embassy spokesman noted.

"Even qualified virologists or sociologists are not ready yet for a deep and comprehensive analysis of the situation in Russia, in the EU, or elsewhere in the world," he said.

"Scientists have just started studying the new virus," he added.

"Of course Russia's current numbers aren't credible, in the same way that they're not credible in most parts of the world," Judyth Twigg, a politics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, also told this website.

"Testing hasn't caught up with actual circulation of the virus. We're operating almost everywhere with incomplete information," she said.

The Russian anomaly might be due to Rospotrebnadzor's erratic testing methods, according to independent Russian newspaper The Moscow Times.

It might also be due to false negatives from inferior testing kits made by Vector Institute, a Rospotrebnadzor offshoot.

But if Russia deliberately lied to the WHO, it would not surprise Eugene Finkel, an international relations professor at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Washington.

Data politics

"I, personally, would not count on the Russian government telling the truth if the numbers become scary," he told EUobserver.

Russia's decrepit healthcare service, especially in small towns, might "have limited the government's ability to really know the exact numbers," he noted.

But crisis data was also part of Russian president Vladimir Putin's political calculations, Finkel said.

Putin was using Russia's crisis to ram through constitutional changes extending his reign, the JHU professor said.

The crisis helped "show everyone that he [Putin] is in charge and can protect the state from any imaginable threat," the professor added.

"But that means that the numbers need to be not too high," Finkel said.

"Russia has a pretty storied track record of deceiving domestic and foreign audiences and bodies on sensitive issues," he also said, citing Russia's propaganda campaign on the MH17 air disaster and its recent Olympic ban for sports doping as examples.

JHU compiles data on infections in a "coronavirus resource centre".

It monitors reliable media and social media for new cases. It also gets "direct" information from some health authorities and medical associations.

And it "confirms" case numbers with the WHO prior to publication, the JHU website says.

The WHO did not answer EUobserver when asked if it trusted Russia's figures.

But the UN agency in Geneva did not have a mechanism for verifying data, it said.

"We work with the data that we're given [by member states]," a WHO spokeswoman said.

'Playing with lives'

The WHO statistics aside, the EU foreign service has also accused Russia of conducting a "significant disinformation campaign" on other coronavirus issues.

The campaign was, as usual, designed to sow discord in Western countries, the EU service said in a public report.

Russia's "blatant lies" were "playing with people's lives", the EU warned.

"Stop the viral spread of disinformation. Wash hands, stay home if unwell," it said.

EU officials recorded more than 80 bogus stories on coronavirus by pro-Kremlin media in recent times.

One Russian TV station claimed it was a US biological weapon, for instance. A pro-Kremlin news website claimed Western pharmaceutical firms had exaggerated the pandemic, in another example.

At the same time, "Russian state-linked false personas" on social media were "pushing ... disinformation about the coronavirus in English, Spanish, Italian, German, and French", a second, internal EU report leaked to European media said.

But for its part, Russia lambasted the EU accusations.

"These kinds of cheapjack concoctions are not worth comment," the Russian EU embassy spokesman told EUobserver.

And those who the funded EU institutions were "likely to feel burning shame" over the counter-propaganda reports, he said.

Opinion

How reliable is WHO coronavirus data?

The numbers that the World Health Organisation publishes, the numbers that journalists and governments around the world refer to, are contaminated with politics. They are not useless, they tell us something, but they paint a skewed picture. How so?

Not easy getting 80,000 EU citizens home

Returning home has become complicated for many EU citizens - both inside and outside the bloc -as the number of travel and entry restrictions keeps growing globally in a bid to halt the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.

EU states urged to share sick patients

EU states should take in sick people from Italy and Spain in a show of solidarity amid foreign propaganda attacks, MEPs have said.

Opinion

Time for a reset: EU regional funding needs overhauling

Vasco Alves Cordeiro, president of the European Committee of the Regions, is advocating a revamp of the EU's regional policy so that it better supports all regions in addressing major challenges such as the green and digital transitions.

Opinion

How do you make embarrassing EU documents 'disappear'?

The EU Commission's new magic formula for avoiding scrutiny is simple. You declare the documents in question to be "short-lived correspondence for a preliminary exchange of views" and thus exempt them from being logged in the official inventory.

Latest News

  1. European Political Community and key media vote This WEEK
  2. Is the ECB sabotaging Europe's Green Deal?
  3. The realists vs idealists Brussels battle on Ukraine's EU accession
  4. EU women promised new dawn under anti-violence pact
  5. Three steps EU can take to halt Azerbaijan's mafia-style bullying
  6. Punish Belarus too for aiding Putin's Ukraine war
  7. Added-value for Russia diamond ban, as G7 and EU prepare sanctions
  8. EU states to agree on asylum crisis bill, say EU officials

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  2. International Medical Devices Regulators Forum (IMDRF)Join regulators, industry & healthcare experts at the 24th IMDRF session, September 25-26, Berlin. Register by 20 Sept to join in person or online.
  3. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  4. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA
  5. International Medical Devices Regulators Forum (IMDRF)Join regulators & industry experts at the 24th IMDRF session- Berlin September 25-26. Register early for discounted hotel rates
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersGlobal interest in the new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations – here are the speakers for the launch

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of Ministers20 June: Launch of the new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations
  2. International Sustainable Finance CentreJoin CEE Sustainable Finance Summit, 15 – 19 May 2023, high-level event for finance & business
  3. ICLEISeven actionable measures to make food procurement in Europe more sustainable
  4. World BankWorld Bank Report Highlights Role of Human Development for a Successful Green Transition in Europe
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic summit to step up the fight against food loss and waste
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersThink-tank: Strengthen co-operation around tech giants’ influence in the Nordics

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us