Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
WHO: Nearly 3 Times More People Died During Pandemic Than Officials Say
NPR: Governments Have Undercounted The COVID-19 Death Toll By Millions, WHO Says
The COVID-19 pandemic directly or indirectly caused 14.9 million deaths in 2020 and 2021, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, in its newest attempt to quantify the outbreak's terrible toll. That's around 2.7 times more than the 5.42 million COVID-19 deaths the WHO says were previously reported through official channels in the same 2-year period. (Chappell, 5/5)
Fox News: Nearly 15M Deaths Worldwide Associated With COVID-19: WHO
That number is more than double Johns Hopkins University's official death toll of more than 6 million, with the majority of excess mortality – calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred and the number that would be expected in the absence of the pandemic based on previous data – in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. (Musto, 5/5)
The New York Times: Death Toll During Pandemic Far Exceeds Totals Reported By Countries, W.H.O. Says
Most of the excess deaths were victims of Covid itself, the experts said, but some died because the pandemic made it more difficult to get medical care for ailments such as heart attacks. The previous toll, based solely on death counts reported by countries, was six million. Much of the loss of life from the pandemic was concentrated in 2021, when more contagious variants tore through even countries that had fended off earlier outbreaks. Overall deaths that year were roughly 18 percent higher — an extra 10 million people — than they would have been without the pandemic, the W.H.O.-assembled experts estimated. (Mueller and Nolen, 5/5)
Stat: WHO: Nearly 15M Died As Result Of Covid-19 In First Two Years Of Pandemic
The analysis has already been a source of controversy, with the Indian government reportedly having delayed its release. The WHO analysis suggests 4.74 million people in India died in the first two years of the pandemic. India itself reported only 481,000 deaths for that entire period, though on Tuesday it acknowledged there were 475,000 extra deaths in 2020 alone. India was hit with a devastating second wave of infections in the spring of 2021, becoming the first country to report more than 400,000 new infections a day. Its official death toll has long been questioned. (Branswell, 5/5)
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The Boston Globe: BU Professor: True Death Toll Of COVID-19 Pandemic Could Now Be As High As 1.22 Million In United States
A Boston University professor estimated Thursday that the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States could now be as high as 1.22 million, substantially higher than the nearly 1 million that official counts are approaching. “We passed the million mark some time ago,” said Andrew C. Stokes, an assistant professor in the Department of Global Health at the Boston University School of Public Health.He said the additional deaths in his count reflected deaths from COVID-19 that were not recorded due to “pervasive underreporting,” as well as deaths caused by “indirect mechanisms” such as interruptions in health care, people delaying care, and economic hardship and food insecurity. (Finucane, 5/5)
