JRL NEWSWATCH: “Russia Starts Census Amid Pandemic, Demographic Crisis” – AFP
“… Russia’s population has been in near-constant decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, due to a low birth rate, an under-resourced healthcare system, and emigration. The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed at least 400,000 people in Russia according to the national statistic agency Rosstat, has seriously aggravated the problem. … This week the country set a pandemic high for both cases and deaths …. To help limit the spread, much of the census will be conducted online, while workers will be regularly tested ….”