The Hidden Toll of the COVID-19 Pandemic

(11 August 2021) The fact that official COVID-19 death statistics didn't account for the full mortality burden of the pandemic was evident even in the first few months months of 2020. Over the course of the pandemic, differences in methodologies for counting COVID deaths and varied availability of COVID tests limited the reliability of officially reported mortality figures and made accurate comparison between countries impossible. Due to the lack of data, it has not been possible to obtain a comparable and complete estimate of COVID-19 mortality burden. However, the Economist's Tracker for COVID-19 Excess Deaths now closes the gap.

• Using historical and 2020-2021 mortality data, the Economist estimates a so-called "excess deaths" measure, which represents the difference between the total number of officially reported deaths from all causes in 2020-2021 and a historical baseline from recent years. This dashboard shows how excess death country ranking is different from officially reported COVID-19 deaths ranking.
• The excess deaths measure has the potential to give a more complete picture by including additional COVID-related deaths, such as victims who never tested positive for the coronavirus due to lack of COVID-19 test capacities, contributing to the underestimation of COVID-19 deaths, and deaths caused by COVID-19 indirectly when a healthcare system was not able to deliver necessary treatment to people suffering from conditions other than COVID-19.
• The Tracker's findings indicate that the officially reported figures may substantially underestimate the true number of COVID-19 deaths. For example, in Tajikistan the total number of officially reported COVID-19 deaths in 2020-2021 is equal to 1 per 100,000 population. At the same time, the number of excess deaths in Tajikistan excluding officially documented COVID-19 deaths is equal to 92 per 100,000 population.
• Some of the excess deaths may be indirect COVID deaths or deaths unrelated to COVID-19 — but certainly not all. The scale of excess deaths beyond the officially reported COVID death toll in a given country provides a likely indicator of the extent to which deaths from COVID-19 may be undercounted there.
• Assuming that the number of unreported COVID deaths is proportional to the number of excess deaths besides officially reported COVID-19 deaths, Serbia, Russia and Armenia are the countries where officially reported COVID-19 deaths figures may most underestimate the number of "true" COVID-19 deaths.