Total COVID victims is much worse than we think

The global death toll from COVID-19 was possibly more than three times worse than what is officially recorded.

As many as 18.2 million people probably died during the first two years of the pandemic, according to the first peer-reviewed global estimate of excess deaths.

In their study published in The Lancet last week, researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation pointed to a lack of evidence and unreliable mortality data to explain the discrepancy with official estimates of about 5.9 million of deaths. They found that COVID led to a 17% increase in deaths worldwide.

“Globally, this is the biggest mortality shock since the Spanish fluChristopher JL Murray, director of the Seattle-based institute, told me. The flu pandemic that began in 1918 claimed the lives of at least 50 million people.

The evidence suggests that the vast majority of the increase in mortality is a direct result of COVID-19, Murray said. But some deaths may also have occurred indirectly, caused by lack of access to health care and other essential services during the pandemic, or by behavioral changes that led to suicide or drug abuse.

Although much of the underestimation of the pandemic’s true impact on mortality occurred in low- and middle-income countries, even some wealthy nations may have missed fatal COVID cases.

For example, the excess mortality in Japan from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021 was estimated at 111,000, six times more than the 18,400 officially reported COVID deaths. Although reported suicide deaths there have increased during the pandemic, that’s unlikely to explain the discrepancy, Murray said.

“We’ll have to wait for cause of death data. But clearly there are more excess deaths, radically more than the reported COVID deaths”.

As concern now turns to the aftermath of COVID-19 — including rising incidences of heart failure, deadly blood clots, kidney failure, diabetes and possibly dementia due to complications from a coronavirus infection — authorities need accurate data. on cause of death to inform ways to protect its citizens and prepare for future increases in demand for health services.

Only 36 countries have published cause of death data for 2020 so far.

“The pandemic has made it clear that tracking how many people die and why they die is vital for governments to formulate better informed policies and better health outcomes.says Jennifer Ellis, who heads the Data for Health program at Bloomberg Philanthropies, which works with low- and middle-income countries to strengthen data collection.