Deaths of 14.9m almost triple reported figure, WHO says

Covid-19 directly and indirectly killed 14.9 million people over 2020 and 2021 – nearly three times more than reported deaths during the period – according to latest data from the World Health Organization.

The calculation of excess deaths is an important tool to gauge the full impact of the pandemic as many countries lack the mechanism to report the mortality caused by Covid-19 in a timely manner.

The WHO estimate released yesterday put the coronavirus death toll at 2.75 times higher than the reported 5.4 million in 2020-21. About 84 per cent of the excess deaths were in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, it said.

The estimate includes deaths from all causes, such as also those from other health conditions when the pandemic restricted access to medical services.

The impact of behavioural changes, such as fewer traffic accidents because of social-distancing measures and movement restrictions, were also taken into account.

Excess mortality is calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that occurred and the number of expected deaths in the absence of the pandemic, based on data from previous years.

Several organisations and academics have tallied the excess death toll since 2020. For example, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington estimated earlier that 18.2 million people had died because of the pandemic.

WHO, however, is the first to give a breakdown of excess mortality by age and sex. Males accounted for 57 per cent of the excess deaths, while 82 per cent were estimated to be above the age of 60.

Wang Haidong, an associate professor at the IHME, said the breakdown by age group and genders could provide important information.

“It is extremely valuable for the WHO to come up with specific sex-age estimate,” Wang said. “It is very interesting. Nobody has done that before.”

The countries that recorded the biggest differences between reported Covid-19 deaths and excess mortality were Brazil, Indonesia, India, the United States, Russia, Peru, Turkey, Egypt, and South Africa.

For India, the WHO estimate put excess deaths at nearly 10 times higher than the official count. The data, however, was met with a strong protest from New Delhi.

A report by The New York Times last month claimed that the WHO estimates were delayed for months because of objections from India. Under pressure from Delhi, the WHO, while asserting it had been transparent in its methodology and consulted member states throughout the process, added a disclaimer that its estimate was not the official Indian government projection.

“India has reported a Covid [death] number of 481,000 … and we’re estimating an excess of 4.74 million,” WHO data analyst William Msemburi said.

Since only half of the countries around the world get timely data, WHO has worked with experts to come up with modelling for the estimates, as it called for better death surveillance for better health policies. Other organisations assessing excess deaths have also come up with their own models of calculation.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the global health body would urge members to generate better data.