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PARIS:
Deaths attributable directly or indirectly to the first wave of Covid-19 infections in 21 wealthy countries earlier this year exceeded government figures by 20 percent on average, according to a study published Wednesday.
Looking at the period from mid-February to May 2020, the researchers reported 206,000 more deaths than would have been expected without the pandemic.
But only 167,148 were officially traced to the coronavirus that has swept the world since the beginning of the year, infecting tens of millions.
Many of the roughly 40,000 unaccounted for deaths were due to Covid-19, but are not listed as such, especially early in the pandemic when overwhelmed hospitals in some nations were unable to routinely test patients.
Others could have been the result of interruptions in medical care, such as missed treatments due to cancer or lack of access to emergency services after a heart attack or accident.
“The impact of the pandemic on deaths goes beyond infection alone because it affects death in an ‘indirect’ way,” lead author Majid Ezzati, professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London, told AFP. .
Excess all-cause mortality during the 15-week period varied considerably among the countries examined.
It was highest in Spain and England and Wales, where each recorded 100 “additional” deaths per 100,000 people, roughly 37 percent above what would be expected without the pandemic.
Deceptively difficult
England and Wales, Spain and Italy accounted for three-quarters of the total number of excess deaths, the study found. Belgium and Scotland were also hit hard.
At the other end of the spectrum, the countries that did not show a detectable increase in deaths in the spring were Bulgaria, New Zealand, Slovakia, Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Denmark and Finland.
The rest of the countries analyzed (Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Sweden) fell somewhere in the middle.
The excess of 206,000 deaths was divided almost equally between men and women, a finding that contrasts with the death rates reported in hospitals, where a significantly higher proportion of victims were men.
Finding out exactly how many people have died during a pandemic is deceptively difficult, scientists say.
Counts limited to “confirmed cases” will miss many Covid deaths that were misdiagnosed or unproven in the first place.
The methods also vary.
“What counts as a death from Covid-19 is defined differently in different countries,” said Kevin McConway, a professor of applied statistics at the Open University of Great Britain, who was not involved in the study.
Building a better model
This approach generally compares the number of deaths during a pandemic or other catastrophe with the same period in previous years.
But Ezzati and his colleagues went further, building a model “that takes into account things like seasonality, trend and temperature to predict the number that would be expected if there had not been a pandemic,” he explained.
Countries moving quickly to implement lockdowns will likely see shorter periods of excess deaths, the study showed.
There was also a strong statistical link between higher per capita spending on health care and lower rates of excess deaths during the first wave of infections.
“A strong and equitable healthcare system is the only way to address existing inequalities and make the nation resilient to future pandemics,” Ezzati said.
Meanwhile, a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), also based on an analysis of death records, found that for every two deaths in the United States directly attributed to Covid-19 from March to July , a third American also died as a result of the pandemic.
Deaths from all causes in the United States, normally stable from one year to the next, increased 20 percent during the period examined, the study found.
The data also showed that the first states to ease restrictions on public gatherings, in April and May, also saw faster increases in infections and deaths in the following months.
“The high head count in the Sun Belt,” including Texas, Arizona and Florida, “shows us the dire consequences of how some states responded to the pandemic,” said lead author Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Virginia Center for Health and Society. . Commonwealth University.
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