Liar liar pants on fire, new study reveals the real toll of COVID-19 deaths.
In many countries, the real death toll from COVID-19 might be much higher than official reports, a new study found. In one country, the real COVID-19 death toll was estimated to be 100 times higher than official figures.
The study, led by Ariel Karlinsky, from Hebrew University, Israel and Dmitry Kobak from the University of Tübingen, Germany, based their analyses on COVID mortality data from the World Health Organisation, and population size estimates from the United Nations World Population Prospect (WPP) dataset. The key aspect of their work was the gathering and publishing of total mortality data, which until now, was not available in a single place.
To estimate the real death toll likely caused by COVID-19, researchers first estimated the number of expected deaths across 103 countries. These are deaths that occur every year, due to a variety of causes, like old age, illness, violence, traffic accidents, among others. Using historical mortality data, from 2015-2019, researchers predicted what would be a reasonable expectation for the number of deaths occurring during 2020, in each country.
Then, they compared their estimates with the actual number of deaths reported by each country to come up with the number of “excess deaths”: how many deaths were likely going unreported.
“We gathered mortality data to answer a number of questions. We wanted to find out whether the pandemic caused excess deaths in the countries we covered and, if so, to what extent,” said co-author Ariel Karlinsky, a graduate student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in a press release.
“Even though the number of excess deaths does not exactly equal the mortality rate from COVID-19 infections, for many countries it is the most objective indicator of their pandemic death toll,” Karlinsky explained.
The real COVID-19 death toll
Their estimates show that many countries seem to have underreported the number of COVID-19 deaths during 2020. For example, for Bolivia, the true number of COVID-19 related deaths was about 32,000 rather than the 13,000 reported. In Mexico, there were likely 450,000 deaths rather than 210,000.
In Peru, during the period examined in this study there were 69,000 deaths reported, whereas the study estimated around 180,000. Peru later rectified this issue and audited their COVID-19 deaths and now their official figures more accurately reflect the truth. “After an outcry by public health officials, Peru’s health ministry made amends. They audited all deaths during the pandemic period and resubmitted COVID-19 death stats to the World Health Organization that more accurately reflect the true number of excess deaths caused by the pandemic,” Karlinsky explained.
In Nicaragua, the true number of pandemic-related deaths was likely 50 times higher, with 7,000 deaths calculated but only 140 reported officially. In other parts of the world, the study found similar patterns. For example, the true toll of COVID-19 deaths in Russia is likely four times higher than reported, whereas in Belarus and Uzbekistan, the true death tolls are around 14 and 29 times higher than official reports. The country with the highest underreporting of COVID-19 deaths was Tajikistan, where the study estimated about 9,000 deaths occurring, compared to the official number of 90, a 100-fold difference.
In contrast, the study found that in many developed countries the official number of COVID deaths matched the excess death pretty accurately.
For the full list of countries analysed in this study, and the official vs real number of deaths estimated, please follow this link.
In addition to the publication, the authors of this study have created an online database, called the World Mortality Dataset, which aims to provide country-level data on all-cause mortality from 2015, for any researchers wanting to study this issue.
According to Karlinsky, their hope is that “our dataset will be a valuable asset for public health officials looking to assess the risks and benefits of a given pandemic-containment measure. Kobak and I are constantly expanding our dataset and will continue to track excess mortality around the world for the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic”.