Embassy in US Demands Bloomberg Refute Its Article on COVID-19 in Russia
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Russian embassy in the United States on Wednesday demanded that Bloomberg refute its article about the novel coronavirus outbreak in Russia, which according to Moscow uses incorrect data about the number of hospital beds in the country.
"Another major American media outlet has been caught blatantly lying about the measures taken by the Russian authorities to combat the spread of coronavirus infection," the embassy said. "This time, it was the authoritative Bloomberg agency that "distinguished" itself. The author of the article decided to back up the flow of unfounded politicized allegations with the statistics from the World Bank on the number of hospital beds per 1000 people in Russia and OECD countries in 2013 (8.2 versus 3.8.)"
According to real World Bank statistics, Russia had 8.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people in 2013, while the figure for OECD countries was 3.8. However, the Bloomberg website says there were 3.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people in Russia and 8.2 in OECD in the reported period.
"The editors of Bloomberg have fallen to a sheer forgery and swapped the graphics. One can verify it himself and compare primary sources," the embassy said, attaching screenshots of data on the World Bank website, TASS reported.
"The faked World Bank data were used to illustrate the following assumption: ‘Poor funding, Incomplete reforms, Missteps on drugs and medical equipment.’ It turns out that in fact, Bloomberg listed the problems of the OECD countries," it said. "We demand that Bloomberg Opinion refute, apologize and respect its own customers."
"Lies about our country is unable to stop Covid19. Such tricks of pseudo-experts specializing on Russia, which shape public opinion in the West about our country, have long become a sad reality. We are convinced that readers and viewers of the leading American media deserve verified, but not deliberately distorted, information," the Russian embassy said.
