Statistics show that the confirmed number of global deaths from COVID-19 approached 2 million Thursday. But experts say the actual number of victims as a result of the pandemic could be closer to 3 million.
According to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, COVID-19 has contributed both indirectly and directly to a global rise in deaths that rose 12% above average last year.
Experts say less than two-thirds of the excess deaths were due to COVID-19, but the majority had been linked to the disease, especially in the early months when testing and treatment were scarce. In addition, 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 people avoided medical screenings and emergency room visits for fear of becoming infected.
The Journal’s researchers collected data on the all-cause death toll from countries that compiled these records. They found an additional 821,000 deaths in these countries that were not listed in their COVID-19 death rates. The countries counted 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 essential to understand the far-reaching consequences of the pandemic. While an increase in heart disease may be linked to COVID-19, an increase in cancer may indicate that people are afraid of going to the hospital, noted Colin Mathers, a former analyst with the World Health Organization.
Medical tests plummeted during the first months of the coronavirus outbreak. Komodo Health, which has a large database of medical claims, said cervical cancer screenings fell 68%, cholesterol panels fell 67%, and blood sugar tests to detect and manage diabetes fell 65% in the US.
According to Fox News, millions of Americans have postponed critical tests because residents obeyed orders to stay at home.
“We see a huge impact on preventive care,” said Dr. Arif Nathoo, Chief Executive of Komodo Health. “It speaks volumes about how much COVID affects 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 being treated, he is concerned that new cancers will go unnoticed until they become more advanced and less treatable.
“We don’t do cancer screenings, such as mammography for breast cancer, and lung cancer screenings,” he said. “There is concern that we are delaying standard treatment for patients with potentially curable cancers.”
According to the Journal, the toll of the countries analyzed by the newspaper showed a “staggering human loss, even before accounting for all deaths from the recent rise in COVID-19 cases.” While some countries, such as Norway and New Zealand, showed negative mortality rates last year, these were the exceptions. Researchers say these countries have managed to contain the virus effectively through behavioral changes that may have positively impacted their death rates.
In the US, the Journal reports there were 475,000 additional 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 time frame, representing a 10% increase in the death rate. Typically, mortality rates in America are rising 1.6% per year.
The death toll continues to rise as the countries analyzed by the Journal report an additional 444,000 COVID-19 deaths through early 2021.
“The final word won’t be known until a few years from now, when the full analysis of all causes of death is complete,” said Mathers, who retired from WHO’s Mortality and Health Analysis Unit in 2018.
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