Toll nearly triple official count

WHO estimates pandemic killed around 15 million globally, far higher than recorded fatalities

GENEVA — The COVID-19 pandemic killed around 15 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, the World Health Organization estimated on May 5 — nearly triple the number of deaths officially attributed to the disease.

The 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 give a more realistic picture of the pandemic, which has, according to the May 5 estimates, killed around one in 500 people worldwide and continues to claim thousands of lives each week.

“The full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the COVID-19 pandemic between Jan 1, 2020, and Dec 31, 2021, was approximately 14.9 million (ranging from 13.3 million to 16.6 million),” the UN health agency said.

The excess mortality figures represent

the difference between the number of deaths that occurred and the number that would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic.

Excess mortality includes deaths directly due to COVID-19, and indirectly due to the pandemic’s impact on health systems and society. It also factors in deaths averted during the pandemic.

The WHO declared COVID-19 an international public health emergency on Jan 30, 2020.

Countries worldwide reported 5.42 million COVID-19 deaths to the WHO in 2020 and 2021 — a figure that today stands at 6.24 million, including deaths in 2022.

Deaths linked indirectly to the pandemic are attributable to other conditions for which people were unable to access treatment because health systems were overburdened.

The WHO said that most of the excess deaths — 84 percent — were concentrated in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas.

High-income countries accounted for 15 percent of the excess deaths; upper-middle-income nations 28 percent; lower-middle-income states 53 percent; and low-income countries 4 percent.

“This sobering data not only points to the impact of the pandemic but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

India’s reported COVID-19 deaths for 2020-21 are 481,000, but the WHO’s estimated total figure is 3.3 million to 6.5 million.

New Delhi decried the data, which put the numbers at 10 times the country’s official toll, as flawed.

Meanwhile, a large US study has found that the Omicron variant is intrinsically as severe as previous variants.

The findings, which estimated Omicron’s severity after accounting for the impact of vaccines, should reinforce the importance of inoculations and booster shots, experts said.

Vaccines helped keep hospitalizations and deaths relatively low during the Omicron surge.

The study, which is undergoing peer review, was posted on the Research Square platform on May 2. The authors, from Massachusetts General Hospital, Minerva University and Harvard Medical School, declined to comment until peer review is completed.