True number of Covid deaths revealed
A new report from the World Health Organisation estimates that the true death toll from COVID-19 - both directly and indirectly - over the past two years was nearly 15 million, which is more than double the official death toll of six million.
A majority of those who died were in southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, with 68 percent of deaths concentrated in just ten countries.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s Director-General, described the figure as “sobering” in the report and said it highlighted the need for countries to invest in their health systems to ensure essential health services could continue during crises such as the pandemic.
“These sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems,” Dr Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
Scientists at the WHO estimated that the “excess mortality” - the difference between the number of deaths expected without a pandemic occurring and the number of deaths that occurred - ranged from 13.3 to 16.6 million deaths between January 1, 2020 and December 21, 2021.
This number is made up of both people who died as a result of a COVID-19 infection and those who died indirectly, including people unable to access preventative care and treatment because health systems were overburdened by the pandemic.
Though the WHO didn’t break down the numbers for direct and indirect deaths, they were broken down by age and sex - with a higher death toll for men and older adults than women and young people.
“This may seem like just a bean-counting exercise, but having these WHO numbers is so critical to understanding how we should combat future pandemics and continue to respond to this one,” said Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist at Yale University who wasn’t involved in the WHO research, per 7News.
The figures from the WHO come as other experts continue to speculate on whether we can truly know how many people have died COVID-19 accurately, due to limited testing and differences in how countries count and record COVID-19 deaths.
For example, a team of Canadian researchers recently published a study in the Lancet that estimated that there were more than three million unaccounted Covid deaths in India alone.
Meanwhile, India and several other countries have disputed the WHO’s methodology for counting deaths, arguing against the idea that deaths were much higher than official counts.
Despite the ongoing debate, Dr Ko said better figures from the WHO might also explain lingering questions about the pandemic, including why Africa appeared to be least affected by the virus despite its low vaccination rate.
“Were the mortality rates so low because we couldn’t count the deaths or was there some other factor to explain that?” he queried.
Dr Bharat Pankhania, a public health specialist at the University of Exeter, echoed Dr Ko’s theory, saying we may never know the true death toll for various reasons.
“When you have a massive outbreak where people are dying in the streets because of a lack of oxygen, bodies were abandoned or people had to be cremated quickly because of cultural beliefs, we end up knowing just how many people died,” he said.
Dr Pankhania added that although estimated death tolls from Covid paled in comparison to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic’s estimated 100 million deaths, the cost of Covid could be more damaging in the long term as the burden of long-Covid increases.
“With the Spanish flu, there was the flu and then there were some (lung) illnesses people suffered, but that was it,” he explained.
“There was not an enduring immunological condition that we’re seeing right now with COVID-19.
“We do not know the extent to which people with long-Covid will have their lives cut short and if they will have repeated infections that will cause them even more problems.”
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