Statistics show that the confirmed number of deaths worldwide by COVID-19 approached 2 million on Thursday. But experts say the actual number of victims caused by the pandemic could be close to 3 million.
According to an analysis conducted by The Wall Street Journal, COVID-19 indirectly and directly contributed to a global increase in deaths that rose 12% above the average last year.
Experts say less than two-thirds of the registered excess deaths were attributable to COVID-19, but most were linked to the disease, especially in the first few months, when testing and treatment were scarce. In addition, the researchers found that many people died from medical conditions not directly related to the coronavirus, but from other causes, such as Alzheimer’s disease and fatal heart attacks, as individuals avoided medical examinations and visits to the emergency room for fear of being infected.
Journal researchers gathered data on the number of deaths from all causes from countries that compiled these records. They found 821,000 additional deaths in these nations that were not reported in their COVID-19 mortality numbers. Countries assessed by the Journal would normally have 15 million deaths last year based on previous statistics. Instead, they reported nearly 17 million deaths.
Tracking these numbers is vital to understanding the far-reaching effects of the pandemic. While an increase in heart disease may be related to COVID-19, an increase in cancer may indicate that people are afraid to go to the hospital, noted Colin Mathers, a former World Health Organization analyst.
Medical examinations plummeted during the first months of the coronavirus outbreak. Komodo Health, which has a large database of medical complaints, said that cervical cancer tests fell 68%, cholesterol panels fell 67% and blood sugar tests to detect and control diabetes fell 65% in USA
Millions of Americans have postponed critical tests because residents have obeyed orders to stay at home, according to Fox News.
“We are seeing a tremendous impact on preventive care,” said Komodo Health Chief Executive Dr. Arif Nathoo. “It says a lot about how much COVID is affecting everyone’s health and well-being.”
Dr. David Tom Cooke, chief of general thoracic surgery at the University of California, Davis, Health, told Reuters that while his cancer patients are receiving treatment, he fears that new cancers will not be detected until they are more advanced and less treatable.
“We are not doing cancer tests, like mammography for breast and lung cancer,” he said. “There is a concern that we are delaying standard treatment for patients with potentially curable cancers.”
According to the Journal, the number of victims in the countries analyzed by the newspaper showed “an impressive human loss, even before counting all deaths from the increase at the end of the year in COVID-19 cases”. Although some countries, such as Norway and New Zealand, had an excess of negative deaths in the past year, these were the exceptions. The researchers say these countries have managed to contain the virus effectively through behavioral changes that may have positively affected their mortality rate.
In the United States, the newspaper reports that there were 475,000 excess deaths last year through early December, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This included 281,000 victims attributed to COVID-19 during the same period, marking a 10% increase in mortality. Mortality rates in America typically rise 1.6% per year.
The death toll continues to rise, as countries surveyed by the Journal report an additional 444,000 deaths from COVID-19 by the beginning of 2021.
“The last word will not be known for some years, when the complete analysis of all causes of death is complete,” said Mathers, who retired from the WHO Mortality and Health Analysis Unit in 2018.
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