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Cremation sites in India were filled with huge numbers of deaths
The Corona virus pandemic has killed nearly 15 million people worldwide, according to estimates by the World Health Organization.
This figure represents 13 percent more deaths than was expected over two years.
The World Health Organization believes that many countries have underestimated the official numbers of those who have died from Covid-19, with only 5.4 million deaths reported.
In India, there have been 4.7 million deaths from the pandemic, the organization says – 10 times the official figures – or nearly a third of Covid deaths globally.
The Indian government questioned the estimate, saying it had “concerns” about the methodology used to arrive at these numbers, but other studies have reached similar conclusions about the number of deaths there.
The measure used by the World Health Organization is called “excess mortality,” which is the number of people who died more than would normally be expected based on the death rate in the same area before the outbreak of the epidemic.
These calculations also take into account deaths that were not directly caused by Covid, but were caused by its indirect effects, such as the inability of people to reach hospitals to get the care they need. It can also be justified by poor record keeping in some areas, and the lack of testing at the beginning of the crisis.
But the World Health Organization said the majority of the additional 9.5 million deaths – which has been estimated to be above 5.4 million from Covid-19 – are believed to be direct deaths from the virus rather than indirect deaths.
Speaking about the scale of the numbers, Dr. Samira Asma, from the World Health Organization’s Data Department, said, “It’s a tragedy.”
“It’s an astonishing number, and it’s important for us to honor the lives that have been lost, and we have to hold policy makers accountable,” she said.
“If we don’t count the number of dead, we will miss the opportunity to prepare better next time.”
World Health Organization figures indicate that the countries with the highest excess mortality rates besides India include: Russia, Indonesia, the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru.
The numbers in Russia are three and a half times the number of deaths recorded in the country.
The report also looks at excess mortality rates for each country’s population size. For example, the excess death rate in Britain – like America, Spain and Germany – was higher than the global average during 2020 and 2021.
Countries with low rates of excess deaths included China, which continues to follow a “zero Covid” policy that includes mass testing and quarantine, as well as Australia, which has imposed strict travel restrictions to keep the virus out of the country, along with Japan and Norway.
The academics who helped produce the report acknowledge that their estimates were more guesswork for sub-Saharan Africa because of the paucity of data on deaths in the region. There are no reliable statistics for 41 out of 54 countries in Africa.
Professor John Wakefield, a statistician at Seattle University in Washington, helped the World Health Organization and told the BBC: “We urgently need better data collection systems.”
“It is a shame that people are born and die, and we have no record of their deaths,” he added.
“So we really need to invest in registration systems in all countries, so that we can get accurate and timely data.”