ADVERTISEMENT

Third of Russians Don’t Believe in Virus Pandemic, Poll Shows

Third of Russians Don’t Believe in Virus Pandemic, Poll Shows

(Bloomberg) --

Nearly a third of Russians believe that the threat from the coronavirus crisis has been massively overblown, according to an opinion poll published on Thursday.

More than 23% dismiss the pandemic as the invention of people who have an interest in promoting such a myth, showed the survey of 7,600 people from across Russia conducted on May 21-26 by the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Another almost 10% say the risk from the virus has been exaggerated and there won’t be any pandemic, according to the poll. It didn’t provide a margin of error.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who was hospitalized this month with the deadly illness, urged Russians to take the threat from the highly contagious condition seriously when asked about the poll results.

“People don’t want to look around them and accept reality,” he told reporters on a conference call. “I can tell you from personal experience this thing is real and it’s dangerous.”

At 370,051, Russia has reported the third-largest number of cases of Covid-19 in the world, with 4,142 deaths. Putin this week said the country had passed the peak of the epidemic.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.