Why in many countries official death figures do not include actual number of COVID-19 victims

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, people have normalized the existence of daily reports of deaths from the disease, which are officially released every day.

The calculation of deaths could increase even more due to the conjunction of a multitude of reasons.

On the one hand, official statistics in many countries they exclude victims who have not tested positive for the coronavirus before dying, which can be a substantial majority in places with little testability.

In the second case, there has already been delays in hospitals and civil registers, entities that do not necessarily process death certificates as they occur, even taking weeks, which generates delays or data lags in the measurement of contagion and the risks that arise from it.

Ultimately the pandemic has hampered treatment for other chronic, emergency or ongoing treatment conditions because people were advised not to go to health facilities Or, many people have not felt comfortable with telemedicine, which may have indirectly caused an increase in deaths from diseases other than COVID-19.

One way to explain these methodological problems is to use the “excessive deaths” demographic measure: take the number of people who died from any cause in a given region and period, then compare it to a historical benchmark for the past few years.

Many Western countries, and some countries and regions elsewhere, regularly publish data on all-cause mortality. In most places, the excess death toll (from baseline) is higher than the official government-recorded COVID-19 death toll.

British weekly The Economist developed a table that includes the complete data for each country, as well as an underlying code, the Human Mortality Database, a collaboration between UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and the World Mortality Data Set, created by Ariel Karlinsky and Dmitry Kobak.

Using data from EuroMOMO, a network of epidemiologists who compile weekly reports of deaths from all causes in 23 European countries, figures were obtained showing that, compared to a historical benchmark of the previous five years, Europe has suffered deadly influenza seasons since 2016, but that the death toll from COVID -19 was much higher. Although the majority of these victims are over 65, the death toll among Europeans aged 45 to 64 was 40% higher than usual in early April 2020.

Much of Latin America experienced a devastating first wave from April to July 2020, according to figures developed by the system. Bolivia and Ecuador have been particularly affected. A second wave emerged in the region in late 2020, as Mexico, Peru and Brazil recorded higher excess mortality peaks than at any time during the pandemic. The virus has continued to circulate across the continent since then, with Colombia and Paraguay suffering their worst toll in April and May 2021.

Figures which surprise by the situations of closure still experienced. A monitor prepared by the weekly The Economist itself that measures the time people spend at home, in stores, public spaces, offices, cinemas and other places to compare it to the situation before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic places Argentina 45th out of a total of fifty countries studied. Only Chile is below in the region, while Peru, Brazil and other countries severely affected by the virus are set to return to normal.

World calculations

As COVID-19 devastated New York in March 2020, cities in Western Europe were also experiencing severe epidemics. Britain, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Portugal have some of the highest national excess mortality rates in the world, after adjusting for the size of their populations. These countries also suffered a second wave of deaths in the fall and winter of 2020. Some Western European countries were slow to vaccinate their citizens in early 2021. But by June, death rates had returned to low. normal throughout the region.

Northern European countries generally experienced much lower death rates during the pandemic. Some Nordic countries have seen almost no excess deaths. The exception is Sweden, which imposed some of the continent’s least restrictive social distancing measures in Wave 1.

In central Europe, by contrast, only the Netherlands and Switzerland recorded a significant number of excess deaths at the start of 2020. After international travel resumed, the whole region was devastated in the fall. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic suffered further spikes in mortality in March and April 2021.

Southeastern Europe followed a similar pattern. November and December 2020 were particularly deadly, and Bulgaria recorded the highest weekly excess mortality rates of any country in our tracker. Since then, several countries have experienced new deadly epidemics.

Among the former republics of the Soviet Union, only Belarus suffered substantial excess mortality in early 2020, having introduced almost no restrictions on daily life. A second wave at the end of 2020 affected the whole region. For its part, Russia now has one of the largest excess mortality gaps in the world. It recorded around 580,000 more deaths than expected between April 2020 and June 2021, compared to an official COVID-19 number of just 130,000.

Outside of Europe and America, few places publish data on excessive deaths. No such information exists for large swathes of Africa and Asia, where some countries issue death certificates for only a small fraction of the population.

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