Argentina has 4 times more Covid deaths than it should and how it stands in the world

The Covid in the world has already left more than 3.8 million dead. Each country, depending on the size of its population and how it has handled the pandemic, has “contributed” its share of deaths to that fatal number. In some countries, the link between the two factors was more virtuous than the others. Therefore, today the planet is divided between those who have fewer deaths than they could have had, and those who have more.

Argentina is in the second group: its number of inhabitants represents the 0.57 percent of the world’s population. That is 45 million inhabitants out of a total of 7,800 million people. However, cumulative deaths represent the 2.25 percent of those in the world (more than 87,000 out of 3.8 million worldwide). It means 3.95 times more which “should” have had.

If this indicator is compared with that of other countries, the United States cumulates the 16 percent of total deaths. This is 3.36 times more than, a priori, it would have made sense to add to the total count. Brazil provided the 12.8 percent of deaths, which places him in an excess of 4.20 times (Its population is 3 percent of the total).

In South America, besides Brazil, only peru surpasses Argentina in this deficit lives saved. In fact, it is the worst performing country in the world: it has 11.85 times more deaths than it should have according to its population (0.42% of the inhabitants of the planet and 4.98% of deaths).

Argentina is currently in position 17th in the world in deaths per million inhabitants. However, if only countries with more than 10 million inhabitants, is located in the seventh place, behind Peru, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Belgium, Italy and Poland. Among the countries of more than 20 million inhabitants, is located in the Fifth place.

This reality occurs despite the fact that mortality has decreased in Argentina, according to official data, since the 2.8% in the first wave of Covid to 1.4 in the second. Lethality is the number of deaths relative to the number of infections. This decline had not so much to do with fewer deaths, but rather the opposite: there were many more infections.

The decrease in lethality is also linked to the fact that within this huge universe of cases of the Covid which was the second (or third) wave in our country, vaccination (even with a preponderance of the first doses) muffled the severity of symptoms, as the average age of those susceptible to the virus has fallen, which in itself makes the resistance to infections to be older.

On the other side of this squad of countries with the worst numbers of deaths per million inhabitants appear those who have reached best results, given the size of their populations. That is, those who could have killed as much or more than Argentina, but they had less.

In Europe, the United Kingdom and Spain are two examples of countries which, in the first wave, got into a very complicated situation and reached get better, with restrictions and timely vaccination. Sweden has 1,431 deaths per million inhabitants: 34 percent less than Argentina. In America, Canada is another case of overshoot: with 38 million people, it has 25,972 deaths.

In Africa, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, they have also become examples of a good balance between deaths and population numbers. And in Oceania, Australia has so far only managed to have a total of 910 deaths from Covid with 25 million inhabitants, giving it an astonishing rate of 35 deaths per million inhabitants.

the world average deaths per million population is 492. Argentina has 1,900 deaths per million. This is another way to calculate the same “Excessive deaths”: the story shows that our country has 3.86 times more deaths than the planet, which amounts to saying 286% more.

How the pandemic was handled in each country, this is the key to explaining why some countries show this “excess” of deaths compared to the world average and to their number of inhabitants, while others have managed to fall below the same. average.

In this sense, quarantines have been an essential constant in the successful efforts in the face of the unprecedented health crisis, but always accompanied by tests, isolation and tighter control of protocols. In Argentina, the lack of balance In the measures chosen to curb the Covid, it has placed the country in a territory of great uncertainty, naturally reflected in its statistics.

PS