LONDON (AP) – The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 15 million people have been killed by either the coronavirus or its impact on congested health systems in the first two years of the pandemic, more than twice the current official death toll. of over 6 million.
Most deaths have occurred in Southeast Asia, Europe and America, according to a WHO report released Thursday.
UN Health Agency Director-General Tedros Adanom Gebrejes described the figure as “sobering”, saying it should make countries invest more in their capacity to deal with future health emergencies.
The WHO has commissioned scientists to determine the actual number of COVID-19 deaths between January 2020 and the end of last year. They estimated that between 13.3 million and 16.6 million people died either from the coronavirus directly or from factors attributed in some way to the pandemic’s impact on health systems, such as cancer patients who could not seek treatment. when hospitals are full of patients with COVID.
Based on this range, scientists have reached approximately 14.9 million.
The estimate is based on country-reported data and statistical modeling, but only about half of the countries provided information. The WHO said it was not yet able to break down the data to distinguish between direct deaths from COVID-19 and those related to the effects of the pandemic, but the agency was planning a future project addressing the deaths.
“This may seem like a simple grain counting exercise, but having these WHO figures is so important to understand how we need to fight future pandemics and continue to respond to it,” said Dr Albert Co. , a specialist in infectious diseases at Yale. The School of Public Health, which is not related to the WHO study.
For example, Ko said, South Korea’s decision to invest heavily in public health after suffering a severe MERS outbreak allowed it to escape COVID-19 with a death rate of about 20 per capita in the United States.
Accurate reporting of COVID-19 deaths was problematic during the pandemic, as confirmed reports represent only a fraction of the damage caused by the virus, largely due to limited testing. Government figures reported to the WHO and a separate estimate conducted by Johns Hopkins University show more than 6.2 million reported deaths from the virus to date.
Researchers from the Institute for Health Indicators and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimate for a recent study published in the Lancet that there were more than 18 million deaths from COVID between January 2020 and December 2021.
A team led by Canadian researchers estimates that there are more than 3 million uncountable coronavirus deaths in India alone. A new WHO analysis estimates that missed deaths in India alone range from 3.3 million to 6.5 million.
In a statement following the release of WHO data, India challenged the UN agency’s methodology. India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare called the methods of analysis and data collection “questionable” and complained that the new mortality estimates had been published “without adequately addressing India’s concerns”.
Samira Asma, senior director of the WHO, acknowledged that “the numbers are sometimes contradictory” and that all estimates are only an approximation of the catastrophic effects of the virus.
“It became very obvious throughout the course of the pandemic, data are missing,” Asma told reporters during a press briefing on Thursday. “Basically, we were all caught unprepared.”
Ko said new WHO data could also explain some enduring mysteries about the pandemic, such as why Africa appears to have been one of the least affected by the virus, despite its fragile health systems and low levels of vaccination.
“Are mortality rates so low because we couldn’t count the deaths, or was there some other factor to explain it?” He asked, citing far higher mortality rates in the United States and Europe.
Dr Bharat Panhaniya, a public health specialist at the British University of Exeter, said the world may never come close to measuring true mortality from COVID-19, especially in poor countries.
“When you have a mass outbreak in which people die on the streets due to lack of oxygen, bodies are abandoned or people have to be cremated quickly because of cultural beliefs, we never know how many people died,” he explained. .
Panhany said that while the estimated death toll from COVID-19 was still pale compared to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which experts say caused up to 100 million deaths, the fact that so many people have died despite progress of modern medicine, including vaccines, is shameful.
He also warned that the cost of COVID-19 could be much more harmful in the long run, given the growing burden of caring for people with long-term COVID.
“With the Spanish flu, there was the flu and then there were some (lung) diseases that people suffered from, but that was all,” he said. “There was no permanent immunological condition that we see at the moment with COVID.”
“We don’t know to what extent the lives of people with long-term COVID will be shortened and whether they will have recurrent infections that will cause them even more problems,” Panhania said.
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Krutika Patti and Ashok Sharma of New Delhi contributed to this report.
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