A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO), the most complete on the number of fatalities to date, indicates that the number of deaths from COVID-19 is close to 15 million, almost three times higher than the shown by official data.
According to the United Nations Health Agency, at the end of 2021 there had been 14.9 million deaths associated with the coronavirus. The official count of deaths directly attributable to the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 and reported to the WHO in that period, from January 2020 to the end of December 2021, is just over 5.4 million.
WHO excess mortality figures reflect people who died from COVID-19, as well as those who died as an indirect result of the outbreak, including those who were unable to access healthcare for other conditions when health systems They were overwhelmed during huge waves of infection. In turn, it includes deaths avoided during the pandemic, for example, due to the lower risk of traffic accidents during confinements.
However, the figures are much higher than the official count due to missed deaths in countries that did not report properly. Even before the pandemic, about six in 10 deaths worldwide were not recorded, the WHO said.
The report indicates that almost half of the deaths that had not been counted until now occurred in India. Specifically, it suggests that 4.7 million people died there as a result of the pandemic, especially in May and June 2021. But the Indian government put the total number of deaths in the period from January 2020 to December 2021 much higher. below that number, at 480,000 deaths.
The WHO said it had not yet fully examined the new data provided this week by India, which has disputed the agency’s estimates. In turn, the organization did not rule out adding a disclaimer clause in the report, highlighting the ongoing conversation with that country.
In a statement issued after the figures were released, the Indian government said the WHO had released the report "without adequately addressing India’s concerns" about what it called "questionable" methods.
The WHO panel, made up of international experts who have been working on the data for months, used a combination of national and local information, as well as statistical models, to estimate totals where the data is incomplete, a methodology that India has criticized.
Other models also reached similar conclusions that the global death toll is much higher than the recorded statistics. For comparison, about 50 million people are thought to have died in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and 36 million from HIV since the epidemic began in the 1980s.
Samira Asma, WHO assistant director-general for data and analysis, who co-led the calculation process, said data is the "lifeblood of public health" needed to assess and learn from what happened during the pandemic, and called for more support. for countries to improve reporting. "Too many things are unknown," she admitted to journalists at a press conference.
