People who died of COVID-19 are buried near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Credit: Fabio Teixeira/Anadolu Agency via Getty
The number of people who have died because of the COVID-19 pandemic could be roughly three times higher than official figures suggest, according to a new analysis1.
The study, published on 10 March in The Lancet, says that the true number of lives lost to the pandemic by 31 December 2021 was close to 18 million. That far outstrips the 5.9 million deaths that the study says were reported to various official sources for the same period. The difference is down to significant undercounts in official statistics, owing to delayed and incomplete reporting and a lack of data in dozens of countries.
The loss of life “is much higher than simply assessed by reported COVID-19 deaths in most countries”, says study co-author Haidong Wang, a demographer and population-health expert at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle, Washington. “Understanding the true death toll from the pandemic is vital for effective public health decision-making.”
Grim statistics
To estimate COVID-19 deaths, the IHME study uses a measure called excess mortality, which is a convenient tool to overcome variation in the ways that countries identify and record deaths from the virus. Researchers estimate excess deaths by comparing the total deaths reported in a region or country, from all causes, with how many deaths would be expected given trends in recent years.
Exc
