Estimating ‘excess’ fatalities, a more robust analysis method, puts the pandemic’s grim toll between 10m and 19m people
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On 1 November, news organisations reported the global Covid-19 death toll had exceeded 5 million. But, as these articles highlight, this figure is likely to be a massive underestimate.
Johns Hopkins University collates official daily statistics on Covid deaths, but there is no unified global definition: Belgium’s high reported death rate partly reflects its including all probable Covid deaths in all settings, while Hungary only publishes hospital deaths with a positive test. Turkmenistan and North Korea have, apparently, not experienced a single Covid death.
