Deaths linked to Covid could be triple the total recorded in the world, says study

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, experts point to the existence of underreporting of deaths. Now, a global study has estimated that deaths could reach triple what was recorded in several countries.

Counting the official data of several nations, approximately 6 million deaths were added. But through statistical analysis, the researchers estimate that this figure could actually be around 18 million.

In Brazil, it is estimated that approximately 170,000 deaths may have gone unreported in the last two years – totaling more than 800,000 deaths caused directly or indirectly by Sars-CoV-2.

Published in The Lancet, the article had the collaboration of some Brazilian researchers, including Fátima Marinho, professor of the postgraduate program in public health at the Faculty of Medicine of UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais).

“The objective of estimating excess death is to assess the impact of Covid on population mortality”, says the professor.

The study looked at the death rate during the years 2020 and 2021 and estimated how much the figure would actually have been for more than 190 countries and territories.

“Our findings indicate that the total impact of the pandemic has been much greater than suggested by official statistics,” the authors state in the paper.

However, the researchers cannot say whether this increase in deaths was necessarily caused by Sars-CoV-2 because the available data are very scarce and incomplete.

In this case, what the researchers point out is that there was an increase in deaths during the pandemic and, although it is not possible to say that this increase was necessarily caused by the virus, there is a high probability that the mortality was caused by the pathogen or was related to the state that health systems found themselves during the pandemic.

“In addition to directly causing death, Covid has an indirect impact, such as the overload of services, greater difficulty in accessing health centers and people’s fear of going to the emergency service when they have a sudden problem at home”, he says. Marine.

In the study, the researchers point out that some countries, such as Belgium (32,800 excess deaths) and Sweden (15,300), had a more rigorous process to count deaths during the pandemic and therefore would not have the excess of deaths. deaths caused only by Covid. However, other nations that did not have such an accurate model of testing and registration may have experienced a much greater increase in the excess of deaths specifically caused by the pathogen, such as the cases of Russia (1.07 million) and Mexico (798 thousand). .

An example of a country that failed to report a large number of deaths is India. Research data show that the country’s official information recorded almost 500,000 deaths during the pandemic, but the estimates made by scientists are approximately 4 million.

Even with reporting problems, Brazil would not be among the worst in terms of reporting deaths, says the professor. “I believe that the Brazilian health system responded well in terms of recording and even capturing excess deaths because you can even count [esse excedente]. There are countries where the situation of underreporting is very serious.”

Even so, she explains that it is necessary to improve information on deaths in the last two years. In addition, she points out that, counting the deaths recorded correctly with the average number of deaths that were underreported, there is a large mass of people who lost their lives in the country.

“There are almost 800,000 preventable deaths. People should not have died, because what was expected of death was 800,000 less than that in these two years of pandemic”, he says.