奇速英语

新冠病毒造成的全球死亡人数可能是报告死亡人数的三倍

The Covid-19 pandemic(大流行病) may have been three times deadlier than the reported death toll suggests. Globally, official reports through the end of 2021 show that 6 million people have died directly because of Covid-19. But researchers estimate in a new study that from the start of 2020 through the end of 2021, there have been at least 18 million more deaths than researchers would typically expect over the course of two years.

Some of this excess mortality(超额死亡人数) may have been missed in official counts due to lack of diagnostic or reporting resources. But some may be caused by other indirect effects of the pandemic, such as lack of access to health care, behavior changes during lockdowns. There was not enough data to distinguish the cause of death.

Excess mortality is “a much more accurate measurement of the true impact of the pandemic” precisely because of the known issues in underreporting(少报) of direct Covid-19 deaths and because of the deadly indirect effects of the pandemic, said Haidong Wang, a specialist at the University of Washington. Researchers, led by Wang, analyzed all-cause mortality for 187 countries, using weekly or monthly reported data when available and creating models to estimate for others. They found that seven countries accounted for more than half of all excess deaths over the past two years: India, the United States, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and Pakistan. There were more than 4 million excess deaths in India alone and more than 1.1 million in the United States.

The World Health Organization has also advocated for the importance of understanding broader Covid-related mortality. In February 2021, an advisory group was formed in partnership with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs to explore the topic. “Gaps in high-quality and timely data are a major challenge in global health,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.