Making sense of WHO's excess Covid-19 death numbers
India Today
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently said that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the Covid-19 pandemic between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021 was approximately 14.9 million. This was about 9.49 million more deaths than those reported globally.
The latest numbers released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 5 estimate that the total Covid-19 death toll the world over in 2020 and 2021 may be nearly three times more than the reported number.
In the first two years of the pandemic, nearly 54 lakh people were reported to have lost their lives due to the highly contagious disease. Per the WHO, the actual toll is close to 1.5 crore. In other words, nearly 95 lakh deaths remained unreported.
The WHO report said that “the global excess mortality associated with Covid-19 was 14.91 million,” in the 24 months between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021, “representing 9.49 million more deaths than those globally reported as directly attributable to Covid-19.”
As per WHO’s definition, excess mortality is the difference between the total estimated deaths and the number that would have happened without the pandemic.
It added that the countries accounting for the bulk of under-reporting included Brazil, Germany, Russia, India, the U.K., the U.S., Italy, Iran, and Pakistan. China was missing from the list even though other estimates of under-reported deaths noted China’s actual Covid-19 toll may have been much higher than the reported number.
The Economist, for instance, estimated that excess Covid-19 deaths in China may have been more than 100 times the actual number. China, as per the numbers available at Our World in Data, reported nearly 5,000 Covid-19 deaths in more than two years of the pandemic.
During the initial months of the pandemic, China used to account for most of the global Covid-19 cases and deaths. For instance, on February 1, 2020, out of the total of 1,514 average daily cases worldwide, China’s tally was 1,496. On the same day, China accounted for all the Covid-19 deaths in the world.
