The number of deaths attributed directly or indirectly to covid-19 pandemic were underestimatedconfirmed the World Health Organization (WHO), which this Thursday estimated that the total number of deaths actually rises to 14.9 million, compared to the 6.2 million officially reported.
WHO experts estimate that 14.9 million deaths can be associated with the pandemic, which represents the midpoint between a minimum of 13.3 million and a maximum of 16.6 million deaths recorded from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021. That total includes the 6, 2 million deaths from covid officially notified to the WHO by its 194 member countries.
The rest corresponds to deaths caused by covid but that were not notified as such, as well as those caused by other diseases that could not be treated due to the overload suffered by health systems in the acute stage of the pandemic. The organization has called this calculation “excess deaths,” that is, the difference between the deaths that occurred in that two-year period and those expected without a pandemic.
In this result they have also influenced deaths that from a certain point of view were “avoided” because the lockdowns reduced the risk of traffic and occupational accidents, experts explained at a press conference. “We focused on excess deaths because we know that in many countries the data from the tests was insufficient. We also know that not all countries have a certification system (of deaths) that meets standard practices,” said the expert in WHO statistics, William Msemburi.
That is why, despite the fact that the mathematical models used by the organization are reliable, calculating how many deaths were due to unreported covid and how many were due to other untreated chronic ailments is a task that requires the collection of additional data, he explained. Dozens of lower-middle-income countries did not generally report causes of death, she said.
The 68% of excess mortality was concentrated in only ten countries of the world, in general countries with large populations and heavily hit by covid, according to data released today. The largest actual number of Covid-related deaths was recorded in India (4.7 million), followed by Russia and Indonesia (over a million each) and the United States (932,000). Following are Brazil (681,267), Mexico (626,217), Peru (289,668), Turkey (264,041), Egypt (251,102) and South Africa (238,671).
The figures also indicate that mortality was higher among men than among women, with the former representing 57% of deaths, compared to 43% of the latter.
Related news
“These data not only point to the impact of the pandemic, but also to the need for all countries invest in stronger health systems that they are able to maintain health services in times of crisis, and that they have strong health information systems,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Measuring excess mortality (relative to normal times) is essential to understand the impact of the pandemic,” said WHO Deputy Director General for Emergencies Socé Fall.
“You have to understand the situation of the countries that did not have the capacity to report all the deaths, not even those directly caused because the victim had not undergone a test. In other countries there was an interruption of care for the chronically ill because the system and the staff were totally dedicated to the pandemic,” he explained.