OREANDA-NEWS. From April 2020 to October 2021, the number of participants and veterans of the World War II in Russia decreased from 1.21 million to 896.8 thousand people, losses amounted to 312.6 thousand people, or 26%. The main reason for the rapid increase in the death rate of veterans is the coronavirus pandemic, writes the Ministry of Labor.

It is reported that the number of direct participants and invalids of the World War II, as well as those who worked at air defense facilities, decreased to 31.4 thousand people from 55.5 thousand registered in April 2020. More than 24 thousand, or 43%, died during the pandemic, it follows from the data of the Ministry of Labor. War veterans, including home front workers and former minor prisoners of concentration camps, 865.3 thousand people remained.

The majority of those who died from coronavirus (83%) are people over the age of 60, whose risk of severe COVID-19 is five and a half times higher, and the condition rapidly worsens within three days. At the same time, only a third of pensioners were vaccinated.

According to the chairman of the Presidium of the Union of Pensioners of Russia and former Senator Valery Ryazansky, many elderly people are afraid of complications after vaccination, and in the absence of a cure for coronavirus, they decide to isolate themselves and wait out the next wave of COVID-19 until it subsides or a reliable medicine is created. He suggested that people over the age of 85 could be helped by organizing free counseling, full-fledged research and testing before vaccination.