27,000 Coronavirus-Linked Deaths Have Gone Uncounted in U.S., Study Estimates
From the article:
Counting excess deaths—defined as deaths above the baseline seen in previous years during the same time period—from all causes is often considered a more accurate way to measure the fatal impact of a newly emerged and widespread disease, since the official toll can miss people who weren’t diagnosed before they died. Initially, doctors and scientists can have trouble identifying or confirming deaths caused by a new disease, either due to a lack of familiarity with its symptoms, no available tests to confirm a diagnosis, or simply because the disease wasn’t known to exist in that area at the time.
Scientists did quickly create a relatively accurate test for the coronavirus that causes covid-19 after its discovery in China late last year. But the U.S. federal government’s delayed and flawed response left states without testing readily available for months once the pandemic started to pick up steam in March. The lack of testing also hindered attempts to recognize and contain the earliest outbreaks in states like New York and Washington, which further enabled its spread. It’s now thought that the virus was circulating locally in the U.S. as early as January.
In this new study,
published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers tried to calculate excess deaths across the country from March 1 to May 30.
Between those months, 95,235 deaths were officially attributed to covid-19 in most of the U.S. But the authors calculated, based on comparing deaths this year to other recent years, that there were likely 122,300 excess deaths during that time, about 28% higher than the official count of covid-19 deaths. That leaves about 27,000 deaths above the normal March-May baseline in the U.S., which suggests the virus has killed many more people than the official count says.
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