Report: Number of COVID-19-related deaths may be 3x higher globally

Editor's Note

According to an “estimate of excess mortality” by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, “more than 3 times” the known number of people who have succumbed to COVID-19 “may have died around the world due to direct and indirect effects” of the pandemic, JAMA Network April 19 reports.

The authors estimated that 18.2 million people died “because of the pandemic” instead of the 5.94 million officially recognized as of December 31, 2021. “The pandemic accounted for 120.3 extra deaths per 100,000 people during the study period,” noted the report. Six statistical models of data collected from 74 countries and territories were used to estimate excess mortality globally. Excess mortality, as explained in the article, is “observed mortality minus expected mortality based on historical trends, allowing for mortality increases due to unusual events such as heat waves.”

At the national level, here are the countries with the most excess deaths:

• India (4.07 million deaths)
• United States (1.13 million deaths)
• Russia (1.07 million deaths)
• The above are followed by Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, and Pakistan, in that order.

Overall, South Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe had the greatest numbers of estimated excess deaths, per the report.