More people have died from the illness worldwide than has been reported.
In many places worldwide, public health officials have been slowing down the count of COVID-19 infections. Some places are only testing those individuals who show up at emergency departments, no matter what their ailment.
Hospitals are taking the overall results of all patients who enter their doors as a sign of the prevalence of COVID-19 in the nearby local population.
Other regions are only testing high risk cases, and some have decided the results of rapid antigen tests, along with PCR tests, even though known to be less accurate, now count.
It’s a fact that most people who do catch the novel coronavirus aren’t being counted in local case counts. Unless your case is severe and lands you in a hospital, there’s no reason for anyone else but you, and perhaps your employer, family, and friends, to know.
This means when you look at country COVID-19 graphs to compare case counts these days, unlike earlier in the pandemic, the numbers are skewed. It seems the only relatively reliable statistics are those related to deaths attributed to COVID-19, hospitalizations, and vaccine uptake.
A new report is challenging even this fact, however. A study published in The Lancet has stated the global pandemic death toll is likely to be three times higher than we know. It all has to do with inconsistencies in reporting, the collateral damage of COVID-19, and excess mortality.
Reporting
A basic factor that can impede accuracy in COVID-19 death counts, Bob Anderson, the chief mortality statistician at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told CNN, is the quality of reporting. Another factor is the resources available from one area to the next. In the US, for example, jurisdictions that have the ability to conduct investigations into deaths via a medical examiner’s office will likely have more accurate data on coronavirus death counts than those reliant on their local elected coroner.
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This type of discrepancy can also exist worldwide. Knowing how many people have actually died from COVID-19 depends on how deaths are reported. According to CNN, an assessment done by the World Health Organization (WHO), for example, found that during the pandemic, in some places in Africa, only 10% of all deaths were actually being reported and registered.
The collateral damage of COVID
Some experts are also arguing that we cannot just look at deaths that are directly attributable to COVID-19. We also should examine those that resulted as “collateral damage”. During pandemic peaks, some people died from other causes because emergency rooms and intensive care units were full with COVID-19 patients and their needs could not be looked after.
Cancer treatments and other medical interventions were sometimes delayed as well. This resulted in harm. Prioritizing healthcare became more difficult throughout the peaks of the pandemic when medical staff and resources were stretched too thin in many places.
Looking at excess mortality
So, with all these inaccuracies, how can experts begin to estimate COVID-19’s true impact when it comes to global deaths? Demographic specialist Haidong Wong from the University of Washington told CNN that excess mortality is a better measure to look at. It’s general but provides a more accurate picture, or a better “guesstimate”.
Excess mortality rates during the pandemic have been quite different from country to country. Some places, like New Zealand and Iceland, have actually experienced fewer overall deaths than normal during the last two years. This has been attributed to severe lockdowns that limited the spread of other seasonal diseases like the flu.
Countries like Bolivia, Eswatini, and Bulgaria, however, have had many more excess deaths. In these places, there were six extra deaths per 1,000 people.
And realities vary from region to region as well. In the US, excess mortality in a place like Mississippi has been much higher than in Washington State, for example. By looking at these general statistics, it’s possible to better see the actual impact of COVID-19.
Is COVID-19 actually more deadly?
On the whole, the study published in the Lancet determined that from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2021 (two years), there were a minimum of 18 million excess deaths throughout the world. Only 6 million deaths were attributed to COVID-19 globally during that time period, however. This brings us back this article’s title.
Does the fact that there were triple the deaths mean that COVID-19 is actually more deadly than we think? It could. Because COVID-19 case counts haven’t always been accurately reported as well, however, this is questionable. It seems possible the disease has actually been three times more prevalent than statistics have shown. As stated at the beginning of this post, not everyone who fell sick got tested. In addition, it is widely known that many people have caught COVD-19 and had virtually no symptoms at all. Because of this, actual case counts are likely much higher than the recorded totals.
Yes, more people have died from the novel coronavirus than we know or admit. However, many more have actually had it, too, than we know. In the end, it may all even out. What’s important is that we go on living our lives but continue to attempt to limit the spread of the virus.
photo credits: SynthEx/Shutterstock.com
