Statistics show that the confirmed number of deaths worldwide due to COVID-19 has approached 2 million since Thursday. But experts say the actual death toll from the pandemic could be closer to 3 million.
According to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, COVID-19 indirectly and directly contributed to an overall increase in deaths that rose 12% above average last year.
Experts say less than two-thirds of the excess deaths were attributed to COVID-19, but most were related to the disease, especially in previous months, when testing and treatment were rare. 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, because individuals avoided medical examinations and visits to the coronavirus urgency due to fear of becoming infected.
The researchers of the journal collected data on the number of deaths from all causes in the countries that compiled these records. They found another 821,000 deaths in these countries, which were not reported in their COVID-19 mortality figures. The countries registered by the Journal would normally have had 15 million deaths last year, based on previous statistics. Instead, they reported nearly 17 million deaths.
Following these figures is vital to understanding the far-reaching effects of the pandemic. While an increase in heart disease may be linked to COVID-19, an increase in cancer could indicate that people are afraid to go to the hospital, said Colin Mathers, a former analyst at the World Health Organization.
Medical tests decreased in the first months of the coronavirus outbreak. Komodo Health, which has a large database of medical complaints, said cervical cancer screening dropped by 68%, cholesterol panels dropped by 67%, and blood sugar tests to detect and manage diabetes. decreased by 65% in the US
Millions of Americans have postponed critical tests because residents have followed orders to stay home, according to Fox News.
“We see a tremendous impact on preventive care,” said Dr. Arif Nathoo, executive director of Komodo Health. “There’s a lot of talk about how much COVID affects everyone’s health and well-being.”
Dr. David Tom Cooke, head of general thoracic surgery at the University of California, Davis, Health, told Reuters that while his cancer patients receive treatment, he worries that new cancers will remain undetected until they will be more advanced and less treatable.
“We don’t do cancer screenings, such as breast cancer mammography and lung cancer screening,” he said. “There is concern that we are delaying standard treatment of treatment for patients with potentially curable cancer.”
According to the Journal, the number of countries analyzed by the newspaper showed an “amazing loss of man, even before accounting for all the deaths caused by the increase in COVID-19 cases at the end of the year”. Although some countries, such as Norway and New Zealand, recorded a negative excess of deaths last year, these were the exceptions. The researchers say that these countries have managed to contain the virus effectively through behavioral changes that could have positively affected their mortality rate.
In the US, the Journal 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 assigned to COVID-19 in the same time frame, marking a 10% increase in mortality. Death rates in America typically increase by 1.6% annually.
The death toll continues to rise, as the countries analyzed by the Journal report an additional 444,000 deaths through COVID-19 by early 2021.
“The last word will not be known for a few years, when the full 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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