More than 18 million people – three times higher than official records suggest – have probably died because of Covid, say researchers.
Their report comes two years to the day from when the World Health Organization first declared the pandemic.
The Covid-19 excess mortality team at the US’s Washington University studied 191 countries and territories for what they call the true global death figure.
Some deaths were from the virus, while others were linked to the infection.
This is because catching Covid might worsen other pre-existing medical conditions, such as heart or lung disease, for example.
The measure used is called excess deaths – how many more people have been dying than would be expected compared to recent years, before the pandemic hit.
To calculate this, the researchers gathered data through searches of various government websites, the World Mortality Database, the Human Mortality Database, and the European Statistical Office.
Rates of excess deaths are estimated to have varied dramatically by country and region, but the overall global rate calculated in the study is 120 deaths per 100,000 people.
That would mean about 18.2 million deaths have happened because of Covid in the two years between the start of 2020 and the end of 2021 – three times as many as the official 5.9 million that have actually been recorded.
By Michelle Roberts
