Kinshasa, May 29th, 2021 (CPA).- The official global health damage toll from Covid-19 is largely underestimated and the epidemic has killed more than six million people worldwide, reveals a report from the World Organization of Health (WHO) reached the CPA on Friday. The source informs that the statistics service of the UN institution have shown that the real excess mortality linked to the new coronavirus is two to three times higher than the aggregate figures provided by its member states. In early May, the official death toll from the pandemic stood at just over three million deaths worldwide. Ms. Samira Asma, Assistant Director-General for Data at WHO said the health shock is stronger than expected. In some of the least developed countries, life expectancy could drop two to three years.
All of these estimates are based on the analysis of excess mortality recorded since early 2020, compared to recent historical average levels, and not only on official notifications of deaths from Covid-19. In many countries, the health care system does not perform well enough to be able to attribute a specific cause to each death. Often national statistics are simply too flawed to discriminate between causes of death. There is a significant lack of data in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, which is why just over 360,000 total deaths from Covid-19 have been reported for the year 2020, states the WHO report. Only sixteen of the 106 Member States that make up these regions have sufficient data to empirically calculate excess mortality. The underestimation is massive, the source concludes. ACP/Fng/nig
