Covid’s True Death Toll May Be Much Higher

Описание: As many as 18.2 million people likely died from Covid in the first two years of the pandemic, according to a new study published in The Lancet. That’s three times higher than official Covid-19 records suggest. Bloomberg Quicktake’s Rosalie e'Silva has more.
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The pandemic’s death toll may be three times higher than official Covid-19 records suggest, according to a study that found stark differences across countries and regions.

As many as 18.2 million people probably died from Covid in the first two years of the pandemic, researchers found in the first peer-reviewed global estimate of excess deaths. They pointed to a lack of testing and unreliable mortality data to explain the discrepancy with official estimates of roughly 5.9 million deaths.

“At the global level, this is quite the biggest mortality shock since the Spanish flu,” said Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, where the study was conducted. Covid drove a 17% jump in deaths worldwide, he said in an interview. The flu pandemic that began in 1918 killed at least 50 million people.

The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal, focused on excess deaths to avoid under-counting and assess the extent of the pandemic’s devastation. While deaths continued to accumulate, the scientists compared the mortality between Jan. 1, 2020 and Dec. 31, 2021 to comparable data for the prior years.

The evidence suggests the mortality surge is a direct result of Covid-19, the researchers said. But some deaths may also have occurred indirectly, they said, caused by a lack of access to health care and other essential services during the pandemic, or from behavioral shifts that led to suicide or drug abuse.

“Studies from several countries, including Sweden and the Netherlands, suggest Covid-19 was the direct cause of most excess deaths,” said Haidong Wang, an associate professor of health metric sciences at the Seattle-based institute, in a statement. “Understanding the true death toll from the pandemic is vital for effective public health decision-making.”

Improving data on deaths can give governments a clearer picture of how best to direct efforts to protect their citizens, said Jennifer Ellis, who leads the Data for Health program at Bloomberg Philanthropies that works with low- and middle-income countries to strengthen information gathering. Bloomberg Philanthropies is the charitable organization set up by Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News’ parent Bloomberg LP.

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