Two years after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, new research shows that around 18.2 million people have died worldwide as a result. This is more than three times the WHO estimate of nearly 6 million officially reported deaths from COVID-19 at the end of 2021.
Researchers estimate that about 1.13 million Americans have died due to the pandemic. In comparison, the current total reported deaths from COVID-19 in the US is about 960,000.
The new data, published Thursday in The Lancet, is based on the number of “excess deaths” in countries around the world. The researchers determined how many additional deaths occurred between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021 by modeling the number of “expected” deaths in years unaffected by the global pandemic, compared to the total number of actual deaths from any cause.
This assessment predates the peak of the Omicron variant in many countries, which has resulted in large waves of deaths in the US and other countries over the past few months.
Many of the additional deaths over the past two years could be directly related to COVID-19 cases. However, the authors of the study say the unprecedented number of additional deaths during the pandemic could be due to a range of other factors, from underreporting of infections to strain on hospitals.
“Further research will help reveal how many deaths were caused directly by COVID-19 and how many were an indirect result of the pandemic,” said study lead author Dr Haidong Wang of the Health Metrics Institute. release.
While overall the US is not among the countries with the worst rates of excess deaths in the world, the study notes one of the highest rates of total excess deaths. The largest cumulative losses from the pandemic were in India, the United States, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and Pakistan.
“These seven countries accounted for more than half of the global excess deaths from COVID-19 over a 24-month period,” the study authors write.
The researchers noted that some southern US states are among the world’s worst rates of excess deaths from COVID-19.
For every 100,000 residents during the pandemic, Mississippi is estimated to have had 329.7 additional deaths, the highest of any state. According to the study’s global estimates, only 21 countries had excess mortality rates above 300 per 100,000 inhabitants.
More than 12,000 Mississippians have died from COVID-19, the most per capita of any state, according to the official count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I think this article highlights the importance of using excess deaths when analyzing the impact of any pandemic or epidemic like this to get a sense of the true, full impact,” says Robert Anderson, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. department of mortality statistics.
The study, released Thursday, echoed similar numbers that came from Anderson’s team, which calculated excess deaths weekly throughout the U.S. pandemic.
“You see, some of these countries have very few COVID deaths, but quite a lot of excess deaths. It does not suffer from errors in confirming the cause of death. Death is death, and it is quite easy to define it. if people are dead, even if it’s not easy to say what they died of,” Anderson said.
Based on data from January 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) own estimate of excess deaths during the pandemic topped 1 million earlier this year. Another current agency study suggests the number of Americans infected with the coronavirus could be double the official reports.
Anderson noted that the current CDC figure for excess deaths may include some deaths from other natural disasters in the past two years, such as a winter storm in Texas that caused severe power outages. However, the vast majority of additional deaths were from cases of COVID-19, which is among the top causes of death in the country.
The agency has also observed significant fluctuations in other causes of death over the past two years, which may also be related to the virus or its ripple effects.
Anderson cited deaths from heart attacks and stroke, as well as deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, as examples that have exceeded pre-pandemic levels. COVID-19 has been linked to both cardiovascular and neurological problems, as well as impaired ability of doctors to care for non-COVID patients during surges.
“We are seeing some decline in mortality from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and this may also be related to the pandemic. These people tend to be at high risk for the severe effects of COVID, so it’s possible they could have died otherwise without a pandemic as a result of COPD,” Anderson said.
Looking ahead, Anderson said the CDC plans to continue publishing data regularly, but may soon wind down the resource-intensive weekly estimates it releases of excess deaths during the pandemic.
Anderson predicted that the agency may eventually start counting some deaths from COVID-19 as part of expected baseline deaths each year. The CDC is already analyzing changes in mortality from influenza and other endemic diseases compared to expected mortality.
Given the length of the pandemic, Anderson’s team had to tweak their algorithm last year to stabilize their estimates, including additional pre-pandemic historical data.
“When we model this data, to try to determine how many deaths would happen in a ‘normal’ year, you need to model the data for a certain number of years. And, of course, you don’t want to include non-normal years in the model,” Anderson said.
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