WHO: pandemic toll 15m globally

ADDS EXCESS DEATHS: SOME COUNTRIES CONTEST IT

India’s reported fatalities are 481 000, but WHO’s estimate is 3.3 to 6.5m.

The Covid pandemic killed about 15 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated on Thursday – nearly triple the number of deaths officially attributed to the disease.

WHO’s long-awaited estimate of the total number of deaths caused by the pandemic, including lives lost to its knock-on effects, finally puts a number on the broader impact of the crisis.

The figures are extremely sensitive due to how they reflect on the handling of the crisis by authorities around the world, with some countries, notably India, contesting the far higher numbers.

India’s reported Covid deaths for 2020-21 are 481 000, but WHO’s estimated total figure is 3.3 million to 6.5 million.

WHO estimated about 4.75 million deaths in India since 2020 could be attributed to the crisis, either directly from Covid or indirectly through the pandemic’s wider impact on health systems and society.

The figures, termed as excess mortality, are calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that occurred and the number that would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic. WHO said high-income countries accounted for 15% of the excess deaths; upper-middle-income nations 28%; lower-middle-income states 53%; and low-income countries 4%.

South Africa’s new Covid cases shot up by more than 50% on Thursday from the previous day, official data showed, amid a surge of infections driven by two new omicron subvariants. –