Russia recorded more than 400,000 excess deaths from last April to this March during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Reuters calculations based on data from the state statistics agency published on Friday. Excess death figures, which some epidemiologists say are the best way to measure the true toll from COVID-19 given that counting methods vary between countries, surpass official COVID-19 death figures in many countries. Excess deaths are typically defined as the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods. Rosstat, the statistics agency, said Russia recorded around 250,000 deaths related to COVID-19 from last April […]