New estimates show COVID-19 has been responsible for approximately 14.83 million excess deaths worldwide, up to three times more than previously reported.
A World Health Organization (WHO) paper in Nature revealed that COVID-19 has been responsible for between 13.3 and 16.6 million excess deaths from 2020 to 2021, which was 2.74 times as many deaths as what was reported in the past.
Excess mortality is the difference in the total number of deaths in a crisis compared to those expected under normal conditions.
The toll of COVID-19 was heavier in 2021
Previously, it was estimated that 5.42 million deaths from 2020 to 2021 were associated with the disease.
The report found that excess mortality was 4.47 million in 2020 and 10.36 million in 2021.
How is this new figure so different from the last?
The WHO report compared mortality data from 2020 and 2021 with the number of deaths that would have been expected if there hadn't been a pandemic.
The excess mortality numbers account for both the number of reported COVID-19 deaths as well as its indirect impacts, like disruptions to essential health services and travel disruptions.
A number of factors have complicated the process of tracking COVID-19 mortality figures, including:
- different ways of testing and diagnosing
- varying reporting of cause of death
- inconsistent certification of COVID-19 as a cause of death
Only 100 countries around the world, which is 52 per cent, had complete death data available, so mathematic modelling helped predict expected deaths as well as infer mortality for countries with incomplete or no data.
The 20 countries with the most excess deaths
The 20 countries with the highest estimated excess deaths represent almost half of the global population and account for 80 per cent of the estimated global excess deaths from 2020 to 2021.
These countries are Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, the Russian Federation, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States of America.
In India alone, there were an estimated 4.74 million excess deaths.
The Russian Federation and Indonesia have more than 1 million excess deaths, and the US 932,000.
COVID-19 was among the leading causes of death in 2020 and 2021
In 2019, the leading cause of death was ischaemic heart disease, with 8.9 million deaths.
While the information on the leading cause of death during the pandemic years isn't available yet, it's expected that COVID-19 is among the leading causes of death in 2020 and the leading cause of death in 2021.
The WHO research estimates that the mean global per capita excess mortality rate was 0.06 per cent in 2020, more than doubling to 0.13 per cent in 2021.
This surpasses the influenza pandemics in 1957, 1968 and 2009.
