A study done at Washington University has revealed that more than 18 million people – three times higher than official records suggest – have probably died because of Covid.
The report came two years to the day from when the World Health Organization first declared the pandemic.
The Covid-19 excess mortality team at the 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.
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.
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.
According to the research, which is published in The Lancet, the highest rates were in lower income countries in Latin America, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. But deaths were also fairly high in some high-income countries, such as Italy and parts of the US.
The five countries with the highest estimated excess death rates were, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Eswatini, North Macedonia and Lesotho.
The five with the lowest were Iceland, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and Taiwan
