Excellent study material for all civil services aspirants - begin learning - Kar ke dikhayenge!
SHARE:
COVID’S TRUE DEATH TOLL
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- Official figures say there have been 55,000 Covid deaths in South Africa since March 27th last year. That puts the country’s death rate at 92.7 per 100,000 people, the highest in sub-Saharan Africa.
- It is also a significant underestimate—as, it seems safe to infer, are all the other African data on the disease. Over the year to May 8th the country recorded 158,499 excess deaths—that is, deaths above the number that would be expected on past trends, given demographic changes.
- Public health officials feel confident that 85-95% of those deaths were caused by the Covid-19 virus, almost three times the official number.
- The discrepancy is the result of the fact that, for a death to be registered as caused by Covid 19, the deceased needs to have had a Covid test and been recorded as having died from the disease.
- Although South Africa does a lot of testing compared with neighbouring countries, its over all rate is still low. And the cause of death is unevenly recorded for those who die at home.
- Excess mortality has outstripped deaths officially reported as due to Covid 19, at least at some points in the course of the epidemic, in most if not all of the world.
- According to recent data, America’s excess deaths were 7.1% higher than its official Covid-19 deaths between early March 2020 and mid April 2021.
- Britain saw excess deaths higher than official Covid-19 deaths during its first wave, but lower than the official Covid death rates in the second—an effect taken to show that measures to stop the spread of Covid had saved lives which in another year would have been lost to other diseases, such as seasonal flu perhaps.
- Something similar was seen in France. But the excess mortality method has failed to provide useful or robust global figures for the simple reason that most countries, and in particular most poor countries, do not provide excess mortality statistics in a timely fashion.
- Global estimates have used the official numbers , despite knowing that the figure — currently 3.3m — surely falls well short of the true total.
- A latest research by The Economist gives a 95% probability that the death toll to date is between 7.1 m and 12.7 m, with a central estimate of 10.2m.
- The Covid-19 pandemic official numbers represent, at best, a bit less than half the true toll, and at worst only about a quarter of it.
- The estimated death rate for sub-Saharan Africa is 14 times the official number. And the first and second wave structure seen in Europe and the United States is much less visible in the model’ s figures for the world as a whole.
- Overall, the pandemic is increasingly concentrated in developing economies and keeps growing.
- To create these global estimates of total excess deaths during the pandemic, The Economist drew on a wide range of data. Official counts of Covid 19 deaths, however imperfect they may be, are available for most countries; so, frequently, are data on the number of Covid cases and the share of Covid tests that are positive.
- In general, if lots of tests are coming back positive, it is a fair bet that many more infections are being missed by a testing regime that is looking only at those seeking medical treatment and those near them.
- Demography matters a lot: more younger people typically means lower death rates. So do less obvious factors such as systems of government and the degree of media freedom.
- Excess deaths in Russia are 5.1 times greater than official covid deaths.
- Description of methodology - economist.com/ExcessDeathsModel
- Death rates have been very high in some rich countries, but the overwhelming majority of the 6.7m or so deaths that nobody counted were in poor and middle income ones. In Romania and Iran excess deaths are more than double the number officially put down to covid 19. In Egypt they are 13 times as big. In America the difference is 7.1%.
- India, where about 20,000 are dying every day (official figure is approx 4000 a day), is not an outlier. In terms of deaths as a share of population, Peru’s pandemic has been 2.5 times worse than India’s. The disease is working its way through Nepal and Pakistan.
- Infectious variants spread faster and, because of the tyranny of exponential growth, overwhelm healthcare systems and fill mortuaries even if the virus is no more lethal.
- Ultimately the way to stop this is vaccination.
* Content sourced from free internet sources (publications, PIB site, international sites, etc.). Take your own subscriptions. Copyrights acknowledged.
COMMENTS