  Tiet\"{a}v\"{a}inen's upper and lower bounds assert that for block-length-$n$
linear codes with dual distance $d$, the covering radius $R$ is at most
$\frac{n}{2}-(\frac{1}{2}-o(1))\sqrt{dn}$ and typically at least
$\frac{n}{2}-\Theta(\sqrt{dn\log{\frac{n}{d}}})$. The gap between those bounds
on $R -\frac{n}{2}$ is an $\Theta(\sqrt{\log{\frac{n}{d}}})$ factor related to
the gap between the worst covering radius given $d$ and the sphere-covering
bound. Our focus in this paper is on the case when $d = o(n)$, i.e., when the
code size is subexponential and the gap is $w(1)$. We show that up to a
constant, the gap can be eliminated by relaxing the covering requirement to
allow for missing $o(1)$ fraction of points. Namely, if the dual distance $d =
o(n)$, then for sufficiently large $d$, almost all points can be covered with
radius $R\leq\frac{n}{2}-\Theta(\sqrt{dn\log{\frac{n}{d}}})$. Compared to
random linear codes, our bound on $R-\frac{n}{2}$ is asymptotically tight up to
a factor less than $3$. We give applications to dual BCH codes. The proof
builds on the author's previous work on the weight distribution of cosets of
linear codes, which we simplify in this paper and extend from codes to
probability distributions on $\{0,1\}^n$, thus enabling the extension of the
above result to $(d-1)$-wise independent distributions.
