Global coronavirus deaths up to three times higher than official figures, WHO says
- A report from the UN health body found that total deaths from the pandemic in 2020 were at least 3 million or 1.2 million more than officially reported
- The discrepancy is due to a number of factors, including lagging reporting on Covid-19 deaths in several countries
So far, more than 3.4 million deaths worldwide have officially been attributed to Covid-19 since the disease first surfaced in China in late 2019.
But according to a global health statistics report from the WHO, far more people have died who would otherwise not have died had it not been for the pandemic, either due to Covid-19 or because they could not get treatment for other ailments.
“Total deaths are at least two to three times higher than officially reported,” Samira Asma, the WHO assistant director general in charge of data, told reporters.
In 2020, the report found there had been at least three million excess deaths due directly or indirectly to Covid-19, while the official number of virus deaths was 1.8 million at the end of the year.
At a regional level, excess mortality estimates for the Americas stood at up to 1.46 million, and as much as 1.21 million in the European region in 2020, representing 60 and 50 per cent more than the reported Covid deaths there, the report found.