In order to get a better overview of the actual extent of the pandemic, experts are increasingly turning to comparing death rates with those of previous years.
Statistics on so-called over-mortality could provide an indication of the “invisible” victims of the pandemic. Mortality indicates how many people have died in a given period of time compared to previous years.
Italy, for example, reported 12,428 coronavirus deaths between February 20 and March 31. According to the Statistics Institute, 25,354 more people died in the period than in the corresponding periods of the previous five years. The more than 12,900 additional deaths could therefore be invisible victims of the pandemic.
Mortality rates are particularly high in the USA
A study by the Berlin Charité, using the example of the small northern Italian community of Nembro, also underlines that the health effects of the pandemic could go well beyond the official Covid 19 death rate. Accordingly, more people died there in March alone than in the entire previous year; only around half of them were reported as Covid 19 deaths.
The comparison in the USA is even more striking. In March, when the country was relatively unaffected by the pandemic, the authorities reported 1,890 deaths related to the coronavirus – but the mortality rate was three times as high at 6,000.
No hasty conclusions
The mortality data, according to the expert from the Health Department of the British Government (PHE), Yvonne Doyle, gives a good indication of how the virus has affected the different countries.
However, other experts warn of hasty conclusions – such as which countries have best coped with the pandemic. “These are statistical increases that must then be attributed to a cause,” said Fernando Simon, head of the emergency center at the Spanish Ministry of Health. But that is not possible.
Virus, according to epidemiologists, the only explanation
Danish epidemiologists still consider mortality to be a suitable indicator. For their Euromomo project, they collected data from 24 European countries, and this resulted in a significant increase in death rates from March.
There is simply no other explanation for this than the virus, says Euromomo coordinator Lasse Vestergaard. Neither there was a volcanic eruption nor an earthquake and the flu epidemic had already abated by that time. The numbers also show that mortality was highest in the countries and areas most affected by the pandemic.
Nonetheless, Vestergaard warns of caution: the numbers can only convey a “first picture of the situation”. A final assessment is only possible after the end of the pandemic.
Doubts about numbers
There are also doubts about the numbers in some countries: Iran, for example, has not published any figures on the total number of deaths in the country since December.
There are also doubts about the figures from China, the country that started the pandemic. Experts consider this to be clearly underestimated – among other things, they point to the many families who collected urns in Wuhan after the curfew ended. (sda / afp)
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