Covid-19 Deaths

Host: If you sum up all of the world's reported covid-19 deaths from all countries since the beginning of the pandemic, you'll get a number something like 6.2 million. At least that's the number our world in data has tallied up, but we've known for quite some time that is a pretty severe underestimate. For one, not all covid-19 deaths have been tested, recorded on death certificates and counters. Speaker: Those numbers should be recorded and in this day and age; it's incredible that we don't have registration systems, so we can't, um, catalogue the departure. Host: And then there's a whole host of other indirect impacts of the pandemic on health and mortality that aren't captured in the covid figures. That's why the WHO has tried to estimate what's called excess mortality; put simply, try to work out how many more people have died of all causes than you'd expect to see in an ordinary non-pandemic here, and when they did that, they reached an estimate of about 15 million deaths. Some countries have recorded far more excess deaths than others through the pandemic. Peru is one example; another is India. Both countries that fared far worse on pandemic outcomes than the official death toll numbers might suggest.