Global official reports by the end of 2021 show that 6 million people have died directly from COVID-19. But scientists estimate in a newly published study that, since the beginning of 2020, there have been at least 18 million more deaths than usual in two years.
What is the true number of deaths after two years of a pandemic?
Published March 11, 2022 12:31
Fot. Getty Images/iStockphoto
Part of this increased mortality may have been omitted from official calculations due to a lack of diagnostic or reporting resources. But some deaths can be attributed to other indirect effects of the pandemic, such as lack of access to healthcare and economic turmoil. Excessive mortality is "a much more accurate measure of the actual impact of a pandemic" due to the widespread problems of understating the direct deaths associated with COVID-19, said Haidong Wang, specialist in demographics at the Washington University's Institute of Health Metrics and Assessment.
The researchers, led by Wang, analyzed mortality against all documented causes of death in 187 countries, using weekly or monthly reports. Their findings were published on Thursday in The Lancet. They show that seven countries accounted for more than half of all excessive deaths in the past two years: India, the United States, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and Pakistan. There were over 4 million deaths in India alone, and over 1.1 million in the United States. It is estimated that for every 1,000 people worldwide, the pandemic caused more than one excessive death in two years.
"The gaps in high-quality, up-to-date data represent a major challenge to global health," said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “COVID-19 has created an unprecedented demand for this data. While we all know the daily death rates, the overall death rate is probably much higher, 'he added. A WHO assessment of the capacity of health information systems found that only 10% of people were registered in certain parts of Africa. all deaths.
"The damage from COVID-19 is much wider," the study group said. "It is important to evaluate this now as it could be key information about the choices governments have to make when it comes to prioritizing routine and emergency health systems." Understanding excessive mortality is also critical to future world population estimates and pandemic preparedness.
According to a new study, the excess death rate in the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic varied considerably between countries and regions.
The highest estimated excess mortality rate was recorded, for example, in Bolivia and Bulgaria. Excess-mortality rates were also particularly high in Andean Latin America, Eastern and Central Europe, and Southern Sub-Saharan Africa.
There are also five countries reporting fewer deaths in 2020 and 2021 than predicted in earlier forecasts: Iceland, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and Taiwan.
Source: CNN
