LONDON (AP) – The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that nearly 15 million people have died from the coronavirus or its impact on health systems in the past two years, more than double the official deaths of 6 million. Most of the dead were in Southeast Asia, Europe and America.
In a report released Thursday, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Tedros Adhano Gebreiusus called the figure a “warning” and said it should force countries to invest more than they can afford. future emergencies.
Estimating the actual number of deaths in COVID-19 commissioned by the World Health Organization from January 2020 to the end of last year, it is estimated that between 13.3 million and 16.6 million people died either directly from the corovirus or to an extent because on the impact of the pandemic. Health systems like people with cancer cannot be cured when hospitals are full of COVID patients.
The data is based on statistical data and models reported by the country. WHO data were not immediately established to identify the direct mortality and other deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It may seem like a bean-counting exercise, but having these WHO numbers is critical to understanding how to fight future pandemics and continue to respond to them,” said Albert Ko, infectious disease specialist at Yale School. . Public health not related to the WHO study. For example, Ko said, South Korea’s decision to invest heavily in public health after experiencing a severe outbreak of MERS has allowed for the elimination of COVID-19 with a per capita death rate of approximately 20 percent among state. United. .
The exact number of deaths from COVID-19 is problematic throughout the pandemic, as the numbers are only a fraction of the destruction caused by the virus, mainly due to limited testing and differences in how countries calculate the dies of COVID -19. According to government data reported to the World Health Organization and individual data archived by Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 6 million deaths from the coronavirus reported.
Scientists from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimate that more than 18 million people died between January 2020 and December 2021, according to a recent study published in the journal Lancet and estimated by a group of researchers in Canada. In India alone, there are more than 3 million untreated corovirus deaths.
Some countries, including India, are questioning the WHO methodology for calculating mortality in COVID, resisting the notion that there are more deaths than officially counted. Earlier this week, the Indian government released new figures showing 474,806 more people died in 2020 than last year, but did not say how many were linked to the pandemic. India did not post mortality in 2021 when it highly contagious Delta Option Covered the country and killed thousands.
Ko of Yale said better WHO numbers could also explain some of the mysteries of the pandemic, such as why Africa appears to be one of the least affected by the virus, despite its low vaccination rate. . Are mortality rates so low that deaths cannot be counted if there are other factors to explain it? He said adding that the death toll in rich countries like Britain and the United States showed that resources alone were not enough to contain a global explosion.
Dr Bharat Pankhania, a public health specialist at the University of Exeter in the UK, said we could never get close to the true number of COVID-19, especially in poor countries.
When a massive explosion happens, when people die on the streets due to lack of oxygen, bodies are abandoned or people have to be cremated quickly ”Because of our cultural beliefs, we don’t know how many people were killed, “he said. .
Although Pankhania said the current death toll from COVID -19 is still pale compared to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 – when experts estimated it killed up to 100 million people – he cited the fact that too many the deceased. despite the development of modern medicine, including vaccines. , Embarrassing.
He also warned that the cost of COVID-19 could be more detrimental in the long run, given the growing long-term burden of COVID-19.
“Along with the Spanish flu, there’s the flu and then there are some (lung) diseases that people are going through, but that’s all,” he said. “It’s not a long -term immunological condition that we see today with COVID,” he said.
“We don’t know how short the lives of people with chronic COVID will be and if they will develop recurrent infections, which will be more of a problem for them.”
Krutika Patim in New Delhi contributed to this report.
Source: Huffpost
