Estimating excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic analysis of COVID-19-related mortality, 2020-21

The World Health Organization website defines ‘excess mortality’ as the difference between the number of deaths reported during a crisis and those recorded in normal conditions. Published on the website of The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, this report estimates the excess mortality rates during the Covid-19 pandemic between January 2020 and December 2021 in 191 countries and 252 subnational units.The 24-page paper was written by the COVID-19 Excess Mortality Collaborators, a team of 96 researchers from across countries, and analyses ‘all cause mortality reports’ from 74 countries and territories and 266 subnational units. The paper finds that the pandemic’s impact has been more severe than the Covid-19 death tally indicates: 18.2 million people worldwide died between January 2020 and December 2021, in contrast with the reported Covid-19 deaths of 5.94 million.Reasons for the gap between actual and reported deaths include low testing capacity in certain areas, varying systems for registering Covid-19 deaths across countries, and a lack of consensus in the global medical community regarding when the death of a person infected with Covid-19 can be attributed to the virus. The paper encourages the strengthening of health monitoring and death registration systems around the world.