HomeCoronavirus Updates: World has reached 15 million deaths from COVID-19 - WHO...

Coronavirus Updates: World has reached 15 million deaths from COVID-19 – WHO estimates

Published on

Governments all over the world have significantly underestimated the number of deaths caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, new research indicates, with over 15 million people now thought to have died.

The World Health Organization released a report today that provided a startling new perspective on the cost of two years of disease and disruption.

According to WHO-assigned scientists, between January 2020 and the end of last year, there were between 13.3 million and 16.6 million deaths caused directly by the coronavirus or indirectly by the pandemic’s impact on health systems, such as cancer patients unable to seek treatment because hospitals were overflowing with COVID patients.

The results are based on data provided by countries and statistical modeling, but only roughly half of them gave data. WHO said it couldn’t yet break down the numbers to distinguish between COVID-19-related deaths and those caused by the pandemic, but that a future effort analyzing death certificates will look into it.

“This may seem like just a bean-counting exercise, but having these WHO numbers is so critical to understanding how we should combat future pandemics and continue to respond to this one,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious diseases specialist at the Yale School of Public Health who was not linked to the WHO research.

For example, South Korea’s move to invest extensively in public health following a serious MERS outbreak allowed it to avoid COVID-19 with a per-capita death rate roughly a 20th of that of the United States, according to Ko.

COVID-19 death figures have been difficult to come by during the pandemic, as the estimates reflect only a small portion of the virus’s destruction, owing to insufficient testing. According to government data submitted to the World Health Organization (WHO) and a secondary tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University, more than 6 million coronavirus deaths have been reported to date.

In a recent study published in the journal Lancet, scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated that more than 18 million COVID deaths occurred between January 2020 and December 2021, and a team led by Canadian researchers estimated that more than 3 million uncounted coronavirus deaths occurred in India alone. According to a new WHO study, India’s missing deaths ranged from 3.3 million to 6.5 million.

India challenged the WHO’s approach in a statement released shortly after the data was released. The WHO’s research and data collection procedures are “questionable,” according to India’s Health and Family Welfare Ministry, which also complains that the latest death numbers were presented “without adequately addressing India’s concerns.”

A senior WHO director, Samira Asma, said that “numbers are sometimes contested” and that all estimates are simply estimates of the virus’s devastating impacts.

“It has become very obvious during the entire course of the pandemic, there have been data that is missing,” she told reporters during a press briefing on Thursday. “Basically, all of us were caught unprepared.”

Better WHO data could also shed light on some unanswered questions regarding the pandemic, such as why Africa appears to have been one of the least hit, despite poor vaccination rates.

“Were the mortality rates so low because we couldn’t count the deaths or was there some other factor to explain that?” he asked, citing the far higher mortality rates in the U.S. and Europe.

Dr. Bharat Pankhania, a public health specialist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, believes the actual cost of COVID-19 will never be known, particularly in developing nations.

“When you have a massive outbreak where people are dying in the streets because of a lack of oxygen, bodies were abandoned or people had to be cremated quickly because of cultural beliefs, we end up never knowing just how many people died,” he explained.

Although the projected COVID-19 death toll comes nowhere close to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, when scientists estimate up to 100 million people died, Pankhania believes it is disgusting that so many people died despite modern medicine’s breakthroughs, including vaccines.

He also warned that the long-term cost of COVID-19 could be even more costly, given the growing burden of caring for those with lengthy COVID.

“With the Spanish flu, there was the flu and then there were some [lung] illnesses people suffered, but that was it,” he said. “There was not an enduring immunological condition that we’re seeing right now with COVID.”

“We do not know the extent to which people with long COVID will have their lives cut short and if they will have repeated infections that will cause them even more problems,” Pankhania said.

Image Credit: Getty

You were reading: Coronavirus Updates: World has reached 15 million deaths from COVID-19 – WHO estimates

Latest articles

For the First Time: Scientists Say They Have Found Lung Cancer’s Achilles’ Heel

An Entirely New Approach Makes Tumor Cells Easier To Destroy In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists...

This is Also True for Cannabis Vapes, According to a New Study

Is Vaping Cannabis Safe? Scientists Say the Risks May Be Different than Smoking In the...

‘Strong Evidence’: Low on This Vitamin Can Cut Several Years Off Life

The crucial vitamin for life and “the take-home message here is simple – the...

Goodbye to Gym? This Pill Mimics the Benefits of Exercise – Says New Study

Doctors have recommended exercise for years as a way to improve and maintain health....

More like this

For the First Time: Scientists Say They Have Found Lung Cancer’s Achilles’ Heel

An Entirely New Approach Makes Tumor Cells Easier To Destroy In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists...

This is Also True for Cannabis Vapes, According to a New Study

Is Vaping Cannabis Safe? Scientists Say the Risks May Be Different than Smoking In the...

‘Strong Evidence’: Low on This Vitamin Can Cut Several Years Off Life

The crucial vitamin for life and “the take-home message here is simple – the...