The daily mortality rate in Moscow has nearly doubled in recent days, its chief health official said on Monday. However, the chief culprit is the heat and not the ominous clouds of wildfire smoke as most believed. Temperatures have been in the high 90s for weeks and a northern city like Moscow is ill-equipped for such scorching temperatures.
After denying statements from doctors last week that the morgues were filling up, public health officials announced on national television that the daily death toll had risen from an average of between 360 and 380 to “around 700” people per day.
Russia is trying to calm panic caused by internet rumors that the death rate has quintupled. On Monday a Russian doctor posted on a social media site that the morgue refrigerator had run out of space and bodies were being stacked on the floor.
Officials also reported earlier that the fine particles and carbon monoxide in Moscow’s smoky air was comparable to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
Earlier this month sate officials warned that fires could stir up fallout from Chernobyl if they burned into contaminated areas.
Older Muscovites said the delayed official acknowledgment on the mortality rate sparked images of Soviet modus operandi to whitewash bad news. In 1986 the Soviet denied for days that radiation had leaked from the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
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